


I Hear The Bells [ringing joyless and triumphant]

by SarahRoseSerena



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU After 8x05, Absolute Power Corrupts, All This For an Ugly Chair, Dany & Missandei & Grey Worm Sitting On a Naathi Beach, Die Die Try Again, Empress of Essos, Exploring Dany's Headspace, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Glory for Underdogs, It Can Be Healed, Jonerys Endgame, Joy Will Come, PTSD RECOVERY, Time Travel, Tragic Angst, Westeros Sucked Out Her Soul, What Matters is the Friendships She Builds Along the Way, Yes Dany Takes Lovers Very Briefly in Her Journey of Self-Help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2020-03-07 15:43:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 101,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18876205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahRoseSerena/pseuds/SarahRoseSerena
Summary: What if you could do it all again? Pass through the looking glass darkly, all your gravest sins unraveling, and learn to light the darkness in your soul... What if the Mother of Dragons could learn to resist the siren song of fire and blood? What if she could find balance between the dragon and the woman? And what of the pack? Is there no middle ground to be met from a dragon among wolves, but the right path to be forged of a lone wolf finding home with dragons?Everyone dies. And then they live again. Yet can the bells ever be unrung?After the hell they all found themselves in, Dany returns to the crux of her crossroads and makes a different decision. Back to Essos, back to liberation, back to the ones who truly loved her. She learns to plant trees. She learns to build families and trust friends. She heals. She hopes. And she continues the fight against all those that seek to conquer her and her coveted children.Eventually, she even finds a new path forward with her soulmate, raising a stronger foundation out of the ashes of their ruined love.





	1. Chapter 1

**I HEAR THE BELLS  
[ringing joyless and triumphant]**

**+**

_**“For whom the bell tolls…”** _

In the silence, she hears the screaming of all the ghosts in her wake. She breathes in the stench of burnt flesh. She feels the kiss of heat from flames long drowned out by the thunderous rain. It could storm for years and never wash all this sin away.

Queen of the ashes, indeed.

_I am not my father. I am not a mad queen. I am not a monster._

She is too tired to lie to herself any longer.

_Once upon a time, I was the world’s greatest hope. I was the brightest future._

Death to the girl with the high hopes and the gentle heart. Herald the monster made of fire and rage. Fire has no mercy, no thought to compassion. Fire burns, as rain falls. It is the way of life. It is the force of nature. A dragon has no need for kindness. A dragon does not build. A dragon destroys. And in the end, that is all that is left to her now. The woman she had been has been burned to the ground, again and again, and every time she rose out of the flames, she abandoned another piece of herself behind, left to the ashes. A gentle heart can only be battered and mangled so deeply before it becomes too bitter to do anything but burn.

She’s no worse than any of the rest of them. But she was meant to be better.

 _Let it be fear_ , she had said. There’s no love left to her in this world. She’s lost … _everything_. One treason after another. One failure after another. All those that remained steadfastly loyal to her, that earned her protection, suffered horribly. All those she had ever trusted have betrayed her. And now she has betrayed herself. She knows which transgression was the gravest. She knows what she has done. What she has become.

Everything is lost, sand slipping through her fingers, any chance of peace or happiness souring as it falls to the earth with fire and blood. _Everything_. Those that laid their faith in her, those she loved, her children, the only man she had ever really wanted to grow old with. Even the very last of her dreams have died today.

_On and on, it goes, crushing those on the ground._

“I was going to break the wheel,” she tells the silence, staring out over the vast desolation of her final victories, “I was going to save them.”

It doesn’t matter now. Isn’t that what she had said? She’d had no idea the extent of how right she was. Nothing matters anymore. It’s too late for that. It’s too late.

 _The higher the rise, the farther the fall_ , they say.

All this for an ugly chair. All the years she’d struggled to bear up under the burden of carrying her family legacy, crushed under its weight, and it turned out that she was never the true heir.

Of course there would be another. Of course it would be _him_ , the one her foolish girl’s heart had chosen for itself. Of course there would be a man better suited for what she’d claimed as hers, what she’d suffered and sacrificed for, what she’d been brutalized for. Sold and raped and starved and betrayed and endlessly humiliated. Despite the whole world set against her, she seized back her power from all those that made her helpless. She dragged herself off her knees and made herself a queen. She proved them all wrong, again and again, built up a host of colossal armies, did what no one had ever done, again and again, and forged a better path to do it. _Breaker of Chains_. Everything she did, everything she was, had been unprecedented. She had been unprecedented. And still yet…

_True heir._

What a joke. The value they put into that phrase. No matter how desperately she fought for them, what she gave up for them, they would always see her as lesser. Unwelcome. _Unworthy_.

Now she has proven them right.

Viserion and Rhaegal, her children, the last of the dragons in this world but for one, died so that they may live. All her faithful warriors, the Dothraki, the Unsullied, so many of them felled. For the west, for the westerners, for _their_ enemies, for _their_ futures.

Gods, what has she done?

It was never a throne she had been searching for. It had been a _home_. Something she had never been able to find. A quench to the lonely aching thirst inside her. She had convinced herself the solution laid in her homeland. In power, the power to change the world order, and adoration from all those below her, earned by living up to them, proving their faith righteous. In restoring her family dynasty. In taking back her birthright. But nothing has ever felt as foreign and unwelcoming as this homeland. Nothing has felt so grave a mistake as looking west in hope. And now, so many have fell, so many have suffered, for the sake of her childish dream, for the sake of her _thirst_.

Perhaps she should have never raised herself beyond that scared lonely little girl in exile. Perhaps she should have perished in the Red Waste. Or burned black in her master’s pyre.

She was never the last one. She was never meant for any of this.

So then why was she the one that birthed dragons back into this terrible world?

All the years she’d fought so hard, hanging by her fingertips as the world ripped and tore at her. All the people she’d saved, freed, promised glory for. All the millions of people that believed in her, held faith in her, _loved her_ , she led them west to an ugly pointless death. And for what? For what? For _these_ people? These westerners that despised her from the start, no matter what she did for them, all she sacrificed to protect them?

A shadow fell over her soul in the echo of resounding bells.

In that moment, she lost who she was. She forgot what she stood for. In that moment, her blood burned with rage. All the ugliness she’d held at bay for so many years, all the ugliness and brutality and malice the world had tried to beat into her, that she’d vowed to rise above. In that moment, she had hated them so ferociously. Despised them like they despised her. In that moment, all she had was rage. Burning and twisting and seething hatred. In that moment, all she had wanted was to burn. All she craved was _destruction_. Utter absolute destruction.

 _It’s what they deserve_ , a dark voice had rasped. No, not a voice. _Her_ voice. She won’t hide from that. She won’t escape accountability. _It’s all they understand_ , her worst self had thought. _It’s all that this world deserves. There’s no helping them. There’s no hope. It needs to end._

Afterwards, she had rationalized her madness, justified her actions with strategy. They will never love her, never respect her, never want her as their queen, so she will have their fear. She will bring them to their knees so devastatingly that they will quake at the thought of treason. The Ruin of King’s Landing was a message to any who would stand against her. And that is what she wanted. To be queen. To hold her throne. To make them _obey_.

But that is a lie. None of that entered her mind as the bells rang out. None of that touched her blackened heart. Only the rage and the despair. Only the spite.

The Night King was right.

It should end. This all should just … end.

Her grandiose dreams, her wild hopes, her ideal devotions. She was a fool.

How could she be the world’s protector if she couldn’t even save the ones she loved most? Her children fell from the sky crying. Her sister died in chains after a lifetime of slavery and a fleeting moment of freedom. She wanted to go home. She wanted to find peace and happiness with the man she loved boundlessly. She wanted to see the beaches of Naath once more.

 _I promised I would take her home_ , her Unsullied had rasped brokenly by the firelight, his face lifeless, his eyes empty. Squeezing tight and corrupting what shred had been left of her hopeful heart, souring it to indiscriminate cruelty and abject misery.

Missandei’s last word kept ringing in Dany’s ears. _Dracarys_. It drowned out the bells. The screams. It drowned out any ember of compassion she had left inside of her burnt rotted core. It drowned out everything else. It would always ring in her ears. For eternity, she would hear her. _Dracarys_. Her sweet and soft and kind and peaceful and reasonable Missandei. _Burn. Burn it all. Burn the world. It deserves no better._ That’s not what Missandei had meant. _Burn our enemies_ , she had meant. _Do what you’ve come here to do, fulfill your vision for us all, avenge me_ , she must’ve meant. _Breaker of Chains. Kill the masters._ But all Dany heard was the sound her desecrated body made as it hit the ground.

A corpse and its chains dropped to the dirt with no care, head and body apart.

She should have let the Night King spread his ice and death. Cleanse this ugly world of its evil and innocent alike. Scour it all away until there was nothing left. Surely that would be kinder than preserving the suffering, the injustice of happiness coming only to the cruel? Surely that would be a mercy?

She should have… She should have… She should have never come west. She should have stayed in her Bay of Dragons and protected the people that deserved it, the people that believed in her, the people that believed she would give them a better life. How could she have done this? How could she have ruined them all so irrevocably?

And her children…

They deserved better. The Essosi. The dragons. They deserved better.

 _The human children you burned alive in those streets deserved better_ , a vicious voice whispers darkly through her mind. Her voice. It sickens her. She wants to cry. She wants to scream. She wants to tear the Red Keep down to its last cursed brick. Scorch its earth so that nothing may ever grow or build in its place ever again. All this, for that city. All this, for absolutely nothing.

She is … _ravaged_.

She’d told herself she could be this creature they’d made her. She’d told herself fear would be enough. But it’s not. It could never be. She cannot stomach this. She cannot sustain on _this_. Their fear tastes like ash on her tongue in the aftermath of her blinding rage. It is a sickness in her very soul, their fear, her spite. She was wrong. She is not steel enough to endure this.

 _You’re a conqueror, Daenerys Stormborn_ , someone had once said. _You were never meant to sit on some throne._ He had said it so proudly, no condemnation or denigration, only admiration and excitement. And how right he had been. She was unforgivably foolish, thinking she needed this throne, this toxic crown. Foolish, thinking this would fill up the black sucking void inside of her.

Why couldn’t she have loved Daario Naharis? Her soul would have been no safer, but her heart would have remained intact. Instead, she loves a man disgusted by her, _horrified_ of her, a good man with honor whose eyes confirm everything she abhors about herself when he looks at her. If he looked at her. Truth is, he can’t bear to face her now. And how can she blame him? If she won’t even turn and face her own reflection, how can she expect more from him?

This thirst, this void. How wrong she had been.

Nothing had ever made her feel so bright and whole and happy as the freed slaves of Yunkai pouring out and reaching for her, lifting her onto their shoulders, among them, calling her _mhysa_. That should have been her sign, not to keep going further and further to the Iron Throne, but to seek out the happiness right there in that land, in those people, in that mission. _Breaker of Chains_. That was her real home, the Bay of Dragons. That was her true belonging, with the freedmen in the east. She could have found fulfillment right there and that corner of the world would have been better for it. If she had stayed, she could have left at least a little piece of this world better off and brighter than she entered it. She could have been remembered as a savior.

If she could have learned to love herself. To be safe and satisfied. Secure in her vulnerability instead of always needing to be the strongest in order to escape her oppressors. If being weak hadn’t meant being victimized. If she could have escaped the drive of constantly needing to prove herself. If someone had told her it was alright to stop, that she didn’t need to keep struggling to earn it, that she deserved not to be hurt anymore, that she deserved to be loved.

Her legacy could have been as Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, Slayer of Lies, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea.

Not this, not what they will call her now, scorning her name, spitting on her grave.

All the kings that came before her have done the same, the unminded collateral, the slaughter, the crush of the innocent, and excuses were made for them, their sins ignored, their victories glorified. But that hypocrisy comforts her little. She is spiteful of it, somewhere in the back of her brain, but none of her righteous fury thrives under the swell of the tide that takes her soul now. The guilt, the sickness, the horrified disappointment in herself and what she has done and what she has become. She doesn’t want to scoff and say, _They did the same, why should I be condemned differently?_ She wants to have been what she claimed to be, when it counted, when she had lost everything. That is when it matters most, proving yourself the good person you swore you were. She wants to have not drowned in the bitter desolation and lashed out with it and punished the innocent for the price she paid.

She never wanted to be a tyrant.

 _We break down, we build again_ , she might have told herself. Encouraged herself. _Try again. Do better. Never give up._ But those days are gone. That girl is dead and forsaken. By everyone. Especially herself. It is much too late to start again.

She is alone now, truly alone, with nothing but the ugliness.

The only one that never wavered from her side, has still not wavered, will never waver is her Unsullied commander. Her brave Grey Worm. But she cannot cling to him. She doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve him. He might still be loyal, might still love her, but she knows the truth. She destroyed him. It was her duty to protect him, to save Missandei, and she stood there and did nothing. She sent her sister into danger. His love, his life. And in Missandei’s wake, he has lost the only thing he lived for. She ruined them. For that, in her shame, she cannot bear to look at him. Cannot allow herself the comfort of him close. She should have sent them away. Set them on a ship and sailed them to Naath.

It is too late. It is far too late.

Daenerys and Grey Worm walk hollow amidst a graveyard of ash. Between the fire and the ice, they’ve nothing but a world of death since crossing the Narrow Sea.

Together, they lost their grace in the grief-stricken rage, him on the ground, her in the sky, slaughtering indiscriminately while the bells rang out, holding the innocent account for their pain. Losing each of themselves in the wake of a woman they loved so fiercely, a woman that deserved better than any of them in this world.

No, she deludes herself. At least he only murdered soldiers. Surrendering soldiers, but still soldiers. No, Dany burned the children alone. Even in his tormented rage, Grey Worm was too good a man to turn his violence onto innocents.

There is nothing left for her here. Ash, a ruined city, charred bones. Rain, lightning on the beach, cold stone, a dark empty castle. Throne left bare on Dragonstone, melted in the ruined Red Keep. What a quick turn in her fate, in all their fates, what a quick drastic turn of her soul.

Tens of thousands dead in the firestorm.

 _The Dragon Wrath of Westeros_ , they are coining it. Her crowning ceremony.

She doesn’t want it.

So now she wanders here, alone, walking the halls with all her ghosts.

Waits for her reckoning.

Missandei is dead. Grey Worm is a shell. Jon has turned from her. Jorah is dead. Viserion and Rhaegal, dead, while Drogon has pulled away, nothing but dark simmering rage and impatience, a feeling of impotence and resentment on the other side of their emotional tether. He blames her for her failures, as he should. He blames her for stopping him, holding him back, turning him away when he would have forged forward with his destruction until there was nothing left. Nothing left of the city, nothing left of the west, nothing left of the world. He cannot fathom her shame for what they have done, the damage they have wrought, the havoc they have wreaked. In his mind, they have done nothing wrong. In his mind, the rage is all that matters. Rage for his brothers, hatred for the humans. He is all she has left of her love and he is rotting her alive from the inside out.

It is not something she can condemn him for. He is a dragon. Dragons plant no trees. Dragons are only fire and blood.

Tyrion is gone into hiding, whispering, arranging against her, she is sure. Or perhaps wallowing drunk in a hole of self-pity and misery. She should have executed him, her disloyal Hand. But she could not. She would not. She loves him. Despite how… Despite his betrayals. Despite his advice only ever leading her to disaster, starting with the Siege of Meereen by the Great Masters, ending with Missandei.

If she had ignored him, if she had ignored them all, if she had listened to Lady Olenna when she had the chance… _Be a dragon._ If she had listened to those women, the pirate queen, the Dornish princesses, the Highgarden head, surrounding her war table, pushing her in the right direction… The direction she’d wanted, the direction she’d known by instinct was the right course before she let the men of self-named cleverness and so-called honor around her dissuade her…

Fly to the Red Keep. Bring it down to its bricks. Not the city, not its smallfolk, just the keep and its evil queen. Destroy their fleet in a fast firestorm, in the dark of night, before it gets the chance to solidify, before reinforcements arrive. In the night sky, her children never would’ve been shot down.

There would’ve been collateral, for there is always collateral in war, but it would’ve been the better outcome for them all. She would’ve kept her allies, she would’ve ended the war before it truly began, as she did in Meereen. She would’ve saved those she loved and she would’ve saved her own soul. _You’re not a sheep. You’re a Dragon. Be a Dragon._ So many lives would’ve been saved. From Cersei, from Daenerys. She would’ve been saved.

But she listened to Tyrion Lannister, to Jon Snow, to Varys. So that salvation is gone from her.

Whether intentional or unconscious, her Hand sabotaged her all along the way, choosing his monstrous family over the queen he was sworn to. She should have executed him. But she loves him, so she allowed him to slip away and plot her downfall.

Downfall. What downfall? She is fallen. She felled herself.

If she could go back… If she could just go back…

She would do everything differently. She would do better.

_Lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground._

The dichotomy within her is not new. The constant war within. The privilege, the powerlessness. A princess, a slave. Liberator, destroyer. Entitlement, terror. Strength, weakness. Faith in herself, insecurity. Driven by her trauma, propelled to prevent it, yet perpetuating it instead. Like her brother, the abuser, the protector. Her husband, the master, the provider. Her children, the nurtured, the aggressors. She and all she stands for is a double-edged sword.

_Mhysa is a master._

She contemplates climbing onto Drogon’s back and taking to the sky. Return to the Great Grass Sea. Just be the brutal Great Khaleesi she was originally sold to be, out in the wilds.

She thinks of what’s left of her khalasar, her Unsullied, knows she must send them home. They deserve better than exile here in this grey cold place they’ll never be welcome in. She would never be able to retain her reign without them. Westerosi soldiers could never be trusted, no matter how feared she’s become. But it’s an idle observation she supposes doesn’t matter anymore.

Drogon doesn’t want to stop burning. _Destroying_. She can’t bear the thought of her last surviving son falling from the sky, but she doesn’t know how to both keep him safe and spare the world from his wrath. She doesn’t know what to do. There are no answers anymore. No vision to fight for, no path forward. She can’t see past what she’s become.

Daenerys Stormborn has never targeted the innocent before. The commoners, the families, the helpless. She’s never turned on them. She never will again. She won’t allow it.

She’s not different. She’s just more of the same.

She’s become what she sought to triumph over.

_There is no love left here for me._

_I cannot live on fear._

She’s aware of the plots evolving around her. All her closest allies have become enemies, while her distant enemies convert to loyalists. She could rally, she could strengthen, she could embrace this new cruel path, embrace the monster. _Be the dragon_ , full of rage and spewing fire, caring nothing for those on the ground, so long as she hoards power. She could be just another Targaryen of old.

Missandei’s smile, so faint it barely exists, but the impact of it fills her chest. The look in their eyes, Missandei and Grey Worm, as everything else falls away and nothing but the two of them become real. The crunch of broken slave collars under her boots, the brush of dirty calloused hands reaching for her, brushing her dress, her shoulders, catching her hair, amazed calls of _mhysa_.

Breath on her skin, making her shiver, as Jon Snow rolls her beneath him and sinks into her. As she lets him, allowing herself the submissive position, allowing herself the vulnerability of giving him power over her. As he kisses her madly, licks up her chin to her nose like an affectionate wolf. The humor and awe and fondness in that gleam of his eyes as he looks at her, as he jokes about lying witches and false curses, as he makes her dream a thousand dreams of that buried yearning, that ache for love and peace and joy, for family, for babies, for home.

No. She will not be their vengeful Dragon Queen.

The world is a beast of burden. Her one last act of goodwill for it will be surrendering herself. Sparing it a Black Reign from her poisoned heart.

She wants to take one last look at the stormy sky before this is over, wants to feel the cold rain on her skin, the wet sand beneath her feet.

She was a fool. And now she is a coward.

Their hallow screams echo on. The hollow silence grows louder.

“Now it ends,” she whispers to the ghosts she carries. Hearing him come, thinking wryly, _And here arrives the very last Dragonslayer…_

Numb in her certainty, her acceptance, she turns to face Jon Snow.


	2. Chapter 2

**I HEAR THE BELLS  
[ringing joyless and triumphant]**

**+**

_**“War makes monsters of us all…”** _

_Every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin._

Reckoning. There’s a reckoning coming. It’s a tide bringing forth the sea. It can’t be avoided. This can’t be changed. There’s no hope left. There’s only…

Duty.

Duty versus…

Duty versus love.

Love is the death of duty.

Blood in the water.

She’s standing in the rain when he finds her. When he follows up the winding stone steps back to her throne room. An echoing empty cavern of darkness and desolation. Of grief unattended, festered, degenerative. He doesn’t try to come close. He keeps a good distance between them. But he lets the wake of her pull him inexorably after. As much as he wants to turn and run, close his eyes and pretend, he can’t turn back now. He won’t abandon her this time.

Dany’s crusade…

Dany’s delusions…

She’s led them all to ruin. She’s led herself to ruin.

Hellfire surrounding them, the whole world coming after them, her set after the whole world. Queen of the ashes in this kingdom isn’t enough for Dany. For this wraith that used to be Dany. No, she’ll never be satisfied. Breaking the wheel. Why did he never ask what that meant? Why did he never wonder until it was too late?

He’d assumed, like they’d all assumed, it meant reclaiming her fallen family’s once glorious dynasty. Taking back the Iron Throne for Targaryen ghosts. But that’s not what she’d always said, is it? Not stop the wheel, with Targaryen on top, but _break_ the wheel. Breaking things… Dragons are good at that. What comes after is where they falter.

She’s dissociated again. When the inner reality is too overwhelming, it’s what she does. Pulls away, pulls within, shuts out the world, guards her heart with fire, nothing left in her eyes but ice and death.

She is alone in the world once more.

_A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing…_

This is his sin. He failed her, and in doing so, failed them all. When it counted, when it was his turn to pull his weight, to help her bear the burden, he was a weak man. _I love_ _you_ , he’d said, then recoiled from her plea for connection. Cast the words _my queen_ between them like an uncrossable ocean, an unbearable coldness, and he watched her crumble on the other side of that vastness. Watched her curl darkly inward like a small wounded animal before she turned ugly and ferocious. Watched her poison herself with despair and bitterness and absolute power.

He was afraid, so he failed her.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted, so he failed her.

He forgot to be grateful for all she’d given, despite his claims of undying devotion, claims he hadn’t realized at the time were empty… And so he failed her.

False promises and ineffectual desires.

He is weak.

He wasn’t. He hadn’t been. Before returning to Winterfell, before learning of the lie that was his entire existence… At the Wall, on Dragonstone, sailing to White Harbor… He’d known who he was, what he wanted, what he loved, who he would fight for and how fiercely he would fight. Steadfast and focused. He had a queen that would bring about a better world, that would help him save it, whatever the cost. He had a woman he loved that he would do anything for, that he intended to work at deserving. He had, for the first time, the glimmer of hope at happiness. For those fleeting weeks, getting lost in her eyes, he’d let himself dream of a wife, of a family, a home of his own. Then the North came and all that unraveled.

He found himself … paralyzed.

Indecisive.

Faithless.

She’d asked him for one thing. Just one. She’d gone to war with death itself because he asked it of her, she’d lost almost everything to fight at his side, fight his battle for him. And all she’d asked in return was loyalty. Just hold his tongue. That’s all he’d had to do. Instead, he gave Sansa the ammunition to unravel her. He’d pulled away and left her alone in the cold when he should’ve warmed her. If he had, if he’d done his job, maybe none of it would’ve gone this way.

_Together_ , he thinks. _Together, we could’ve accomplished the greatness you wanted. We could’ve fulfilled your dreams. I shouldn’t have made you bear it alone._

When the world was set against her, unwelcoming and unappreciative because she was a woman, back when she was still only trying to help it, losing everything in order to save it, he should’ve been there beside her, to stand between them, to shield her from the treasons of those closest, those she counted on. Treachery and abandonment, grief and loneliness, disillusionment.

_“You’re the ones that exalted her. Why turn from her now?”_

_“She no longer listens to reason.”_

_“She no longer listens to you, you mean. Why should she? Every time she’s heeded your advice, it’s led her to disaster.”_

Her advisors… The loyal ones were dead and what was left… Her advisors that led her so astray before they betrayed her, sabotaged her, tried to poison her, left her to look at every shadow around her as the enemy, left her alone and surrounded by vipers and vultures in the moment she needed someone to believe in her most. The moment she was buckling under the pressure, the burden, the unimaginable power.

As she leaves the throne behind and continues on, deeper into the silent keep, dripping raindrops along the stone, wandering her way to the Chamber of the Painted Table, Jon follows still. Jon will always follow her.

He should’ve seen the writing on the wall. But he didn’t know. He only had pieces of the whole painting, didn’t learn of what he was missing until it was too late to course correct. By that point, he couldn’t have made her listen. She’d already come to believe he was one of the vipers.

Now she’s paranoid. That he is her greatest threat. He’s the true heir, he’s a man, swooping in at the end of her harrowing journey and snatching up what she’s worked so hard for. All her loyalists, turned so quickly on her to prop him up. She thinks he’s come to take what’s hers, what she’s struggled for, done so much for. Take her supporters, take her crown, take her dragon. Drogon will never follow him, he knows, but how could she not doubt when everything else she’d ever counted on has forsaken her for a better man? Better, because he is a man.

Not because his coin landed differently than Dany’s.

He knows the truth. As much as he’s weathered, if he’d suffered half of what she’s endured and triumphed over in her time, he doesn’t know that he’d have made it as far as she did before snapping. Even now, even as he is, how can he truly say what he would do differently in her place, with the wrath of a dragon at his whims? How could anyone know what that kind of temptation could do to a man?

He thinks of Ramsay Bolton, the clash of wildlings and Northmen in the moors beyond Winterfell. He thinks of his fist hammering at his enemy’s face, feeling bone demolish beneath his wild rage. If he’d had a dragon to command in that moment, what would he have done? What all would he have burned to ash, blinded by that rage, seething with it?

It’s not Dany that’s the problem. It’s the power she’s amassed. No one should have that much absolute power. No tired heart could bear up under it without blackening.

The madness of war is dangerous enough, men in the burning streets turned to savages. As she raged in the sky, soldiers went mad with much less provocation on the ground below. She was their harbinger from above. Ushered in by her and that moment of narcissistic fury. They didn’t even know who they were killing, who their enemy was, so swept up in the slaughter, the raping, the evil. That day, they all went mad.

While the men’s madness get lost in anonymity, in the faceless masses of an army, there’s no undoing what she did, no hiding from it, no atoning. Dany carries the razing of King’s Landing alone.

It’s too late to turn course. It’s too late.

He can’t fix any of this.

And he would. If he could, he would try.

She came to his rescue, all their rescue, at unimaginable cost to herself and her own people. Because it was the right thing to do. Because he asked her. Then when she needed him, when she was wounded and lost and leaning abjectly over a dark precipice, he abandoned her. When she needed his love and support to pull her back and remind her of who she is and what is worth fighting for, he turned his back on her. He let her fall over that edge into the darkness.

When she was strong, resolute, powerful, he bent his knee, submitted, coveted, _craved_ her.

When she was weakened and desperately in need, he was disenchanted.

The carnage that followed can never be forgiven.

For a ruler, it is better to be feared than loved, if one must choose between. Because love is fickle, but fear endures. Hadn’t he proven that to her? But to cross the line past fear into loathing only leads to doom.

“Where has Drogon gone?”

“South,” she answers, still facing the open veranda, still staring mesmerized into the storm. She sounds dull. “He misses the desert.”

“Is that safe?”

Dany turns at last to acknowledge him, measuring him for a long unsettling moment before she challenges, “For me without his protection, for him without mine, or for the south?” The slant to her eerie smile gives him the impression a trap is set for him here somewhere.

By now, everyone knows where the tide is turning. There will be civil war once more, at the very least a bloody coup, Targaryen against Targaryen. Varys’s final salvo, missives sent out before his execution, rallying support for Jon. The true heir, Aegon Targaryen. It doesn’t matter that he’s denounced it, that he’s refused everyone that’s come. She was right. She knew better. It doesn’t matter what he wants. What he wants won’t stop this rising tide.

He can’t take any more war.

He can’t bear another burned city.

After what King’s Landing became, no one is suicidal enough to refuse to kneel. Even the brusquest of high lords have become open sycophants. But that doesn’t stop the whispers, the plotting, the treachery in the shadows.

_“Cut the head from the hydra and the body dies,”_ Arya had said, had been the only one brave enough to say.

If she is gone, the hordes won’t fight. Her khalasar. Which is a gamble itself. Either they’ll sail home to Essos or they’ll burn and slash their way through Westeros to avenge their revered Great Khaleesi. And the Unsullied. The most disciplined legion he’s ever seen, but she freed them, cut chains of enslavement off them. They’re more than loyal. They love her. Not Dany, but their queen, _mhysa_. The idea of her, what she stands for. The fantasy. Will they just go home without her commands? Or will they too set to destroy the west in her name alone? In vengeance of her.

Up close, she is isolated. Surrounded by traitors and secret dissent. But not everyone sees it that way. The Dragon Queen, the Targaryen conqueror. From afar, she still has an abundance of support. Dorne, the Reach, the wildlings, ironborn, Essos…

Yet that loyalty seems to mean nothing to her now. She keeps them at a distance. She keeps the whole world at a distance.

She is lost inside herself. Her soul…

_“What did they think would happen to them?”_ she’d countered, belligerent when accused of her war crimes. _“When you pick a fight with the gods, the sky falls down upon you.”_

And he had retreated in quiet horror. He’d run away, because he didn’t know what to say to her, how to reach her. He didn’t know where to find the Dany he would’ve recognized. The Dany he fell in love with.

_“They’d surrendered. You’d won. There was no reason to burn the city.”_

_“My enemies thought they could use the innocent as a shield to make me weak. They needed to learn.”_

So now here they are. Here she is.

Ruling over a graveyard of ash and bone.

“How long will it take?” she wonders, still watching him with that strange gleam. Patience and stillness and so much emptiness. “I know what you’ve come for, Jon. Let’s not pretend. How long before you’re brave enough to get on with it?”

“This is nothing to do with bravery,” he rasps, throat tight, chest burning. He stands at the far end of the war table, can’t seem to make himself move forward. “I left bravery behind a long time ago.”

“And what of honor?” she challenges.

“That too.”

“Did you ever have it?”

“I did. I was honorable once. I know I was.”

She whispers, “I don’t think you were, Jon.” Then firmer, “Because you were always a soldier of some form, weren’t you? There is no honor at all in war. You knight types like to pretend, but that is an illusion.”

“Alright,” he acquiesces. Takes a step, then another, finally able to manage starting his way slowly around the table. The distance still feels insurmountable.

She’s on Arya’s list.

He doesn’t want to be here, but he can’t let them kill each other. He can’t let someone so powerful, so destructive, rule over them all. Rule the world. A reign of terror that might do more damage than the Night King ever could. He can’t let this be the way it ends. Not when he helped get her here. Not when he doesn’t know what kind of devastation she’d wreak if Arya tries and fails. One more unforgivable betrayal, in her eyes, to set her off on another warpath.

This was his mistake. He must see it through to the inevitable end.

“You are weak, Jon Snow.”

“I am.”

“And just as much a hypocrite as I’ve become. Though I don’t recall ever meeting a man without hypocrisy.”

“I know.”

Finally life flashes in her dull eyes and she snaps, “Stop agreeing with me.”

“I’ve nothing to argue.”

“You have nothing to say at all. You’re not saying anything. Just empty words. Say something. Say something real. Say something you actually mean.”

“I love you, Dany.”

She draws back like he’s struck her, jaw clenching, stunned hatred flickering like shadows across her gaunt face. Lightning at her back in the black sky. Thunder roiling. In the space of silence between the storm, she whispers bitterly, “Not that.”

“I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry for the way things have gone. I’m sorry for my mistakes. I’m sorry for yours.”

He can’t let Arya burn. And Dany… He doesn’t want her to suffer what Arya would do to her. Whatever she’s done, she’s still…

It must be him. Must. This is his treason to bear.

At the word sorry, she recomposes herself, that striking flash of open vulnerability hardening closed again. For just one moment, she was warm and woman and bleeding, before she became cold cruel stone again. “Whatever our intentions had been,” she says, “here we stand on opposing sides.” Her scorn is like ice. “You say you love me then you go to war against me.”

And he can imagine it. So easily, so terribly. Forces gathering against her in Jon’s name. War of the very last dragons…

How can a wolf go to war against its mate?

“No more war, Dany,” he sighs, his weariness a crushing thing. As it had been before her and once is again.

“If not war, then what?” she retorts, but there is no question, no curiosity. She lifts her arms wide to display herself, daring, mocking, taunting. “Here I am. The monster you made me. A force to be reckoned with.”

“I didn’t make you destroy the city. I didn’t turn your dragon on the innocents after our enemy had already surrendered.”

Her arms drop, lifeless again, drained. For a second, he thinks he can see the rush of a thousand ghosts haunting her eyes, but it’s gone. “Alright then.”

_We needed her. We needed her armies. We needed her dragons._

_We used her. We broke her._

All this time, he still hasn’t reached her. The distance lingers and he can’t cross it, no matter how he pushes himself. So she closes the gap for him, bringing herself right up into his space, invading. Her emotionless gaze rakes up the length of him as she advances, chin tipping her head back on her neck, brushing her body into his.

His heart is in his throat. The touch of her heat runs shivers through his body, buried memory surging to the surface, the smell of her muddling his brain, wet from the rain. The slide of raindrops still on her smooth skin. He wants to crush her to him with bruising force, wants to bury his face in her neck and cry. Just hold onto her, just don’t let go, just cast the rest of the world away. He wants to go back, go back, undo everything. Take her and run. Disappear into the dark.

Keep her safe. Keep her loved. Help her heal her soul.

He wants to cut her open and search inside for the real Dany, that one that’s lost to him now, wants to find that wonderful woman wherever she’s been buried away and drag her back out, banish this stranger that stands before him now, this monster.

_The monster we’ve made her._

Even now, even in this moment, with the hatred shining in her eyes…

If he thought she would allow him, even now, he would snatch her up and secret her onto a ship and sail away to some far flung wasteland where no one could ever find them. Where she could never burn again.

His free hand rises before he realizes what he’s doing, reaching for her, his fingers just barely feathering over the tangled hair fallen into her face, the sodden silver.

For a second, she allows the trespass.

The dagger has been in his grip for hours now, held carefully behind his thigh, white knuckled. The Dothraki guards at the door would’ve stripped him of weapons before he got anywhere near her, but the guards at the door were sent away a long time ago. She doesn’t even trust her bloodriders at her back anymore.

He could cup her jaw and reel her in. He could kiss her senselessly, just to know, just to see if he could pull her out again, his Dany, pull her back from wherever she’s gone away to. Just to see…

When he leans in, she shatters him.

“Don’t balk, my honorable wolf,” she purrs with cool mocking. Snatching at his wrist, forcing his blade abruptly up to her soft throat. Through her teeth, she baits, “You’re only the true heir eliminating his usurper. Come on, Jon. _Aegon_. Finish this.”

It’s what he’s come to do. What he must.

He can’t.

Not when he sees it there in her eyes, clarity, anguish, resentment, even pleading beneath that. Pleading with him to just end this, put her out of her misery. Not when he realizes what she’s been doing. Taunting him this way, her eyes glimmering, her smile sharp edged and cruel. Provoking him. Saying the right things, the Mad Queen things. Exactly what they all expected from her. Giving him the confirmation he needs to do what must be done, the confirmation he dreads.

Is she trying to make this easier on him?

He steps back, trying to yank the blade with him, but she matches him, refuses to let him break her grip, keeping the dagger edge pressed to her vital skin. He pulls again, resists, and she fights him, his arm hooking around her, curving against the small of her back to try to pin her against him, to take her leverage.

As they struggle, a flicker of the cold mask falling. Tears in her eyes, desperate grief. So close, their lips brush as she speaks, breathing raggedly, “I’m so tired, Jon, just let me rest. Let me rest.”

She’s not mad. She’s just…

Broken.

He’s kissing her before he can help himself, crushing her mouth under his, swallowing down her pain. The blade bites at her throat, but when he tries to slide it out from between them, she digs it in with a shocked cry against his lips. She’s not strong enough to fight his resistance, and he won’t let it cut too deep, but she won’t relent. Not until suddenly a second blade is there at his own neck, breaking their kiss.

Grey Worm stands at their side, even more infuriated than he had been lost in the killing rage of King’s Landing, his dagger held out by a rigid straight arm, murder in his normally stoic eyes. He means to protect his queen, but he can’t push into the middle of their embrace without endangering her, a thin trail of blood slipping below the blade at her throat.

Just as his dagger would slash into Jon’s, she reaches out with her free hand, pressing her palm to her Unsullied’s chest, urging him away. She commands something in Valyrian, sharp and ragged and fierce, something that greatly disturbs him. He gives a jerk of his head, refusing her, before she snaps the words again, whatever they are.

“ _No_ ,” Grey Worm denies, guttural.

Jon takes the second she’s distracted to pull back, but he only gets a half step before her tightened fingers on his wrist catch him. The dagger tip is pointed at her chest now, her shiny imploring eyes fixated on Grey Worm, Jon all but forgotten.

She murmurs something else for him, sounding soft now, sounding heartbroken. And then, that powerful fleeting moment of the three of them frozen together, it shatters. She shatters it. Tightens her hold on him, shoves herself forward, a sudden violent motion that stuns both men. Her resolve, as always, unwavering.

He had thought there were no tears left in her, but when the blade goes in, the shine in her haunted eyes becomes wetness slicking down her face. Not for the pain, he suspects, because he knows she’s had plenty of pain in this life, but for the anguish, the disappointment, the loss of what could have been.

Jon thinks he’ll be sick. At her choked gasp, at the jagged thrust, at the bone crunch, at the warm gush of blood between his fingers just as her hand goes slack and falls away. He lets her go, struck numb with shock and horror, and she staggers back from him, clutching the wound, the blade embedded.

“You’re a weak man, Jon Snow,” she murmurs again, condemns him.

_I don’t forgive you_ , she means. _You’re not absolved._

When she falls, it’s Grey Worm that catches her in his arms, lowering her gently to the stone. She’s shuddering, struggling to breathe, blood on her lips, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. The noises she makes as she dies are inhuman, soft keens and gasps and whimpers that her failing body rips from her.

Looking up at her Unsullied, there’s a flash of pitiful shame as she tells him, “I am sorry I failed us.”

“Daenerys Stormborn, Breaker of Chains,” he gives her. Falters. Swallows hard. One hand is holding the nape of her neck as he cradles her close in his lap. He’s never touched her before, Jon doesn’t think, not even after Missandei… “You never failed us. You saved us.”

At those words, that mercy lie, her next gasp is a strangled sob. Then it passes, her face smoothes out again, her ragged breaths ease, her shuddering body finally goes still. She’s gone. Her bright open eyes are empty. Really truly empty this time.

Grey Worm goes as still as she’s become for a long excruciating moment, staring down at her, rigid and expressionless. Lightning strikes. Thunder echoes through the awful silence. Then he lays her gently down on the cold stone and rises.

Jon isn’t sure when he had sunk slowly to his knees, watching her die, paralyzed. This is what he came here for. This is what needed to be done. This was always how it was going to end. There was no fixing things. She deserved to die for her sins. Her crimes. Tens of thousands. A city of ash. This was how it had to end. He’d thought… He’d thought she wouldn’t stop. It was too late to fix anything.

This is all what he reminds himself as he watches her body. As he waits…

He doesn’t dare trespass closer. Doesn’t dare crawl to her, cradle her, cry over her. He doesn’t have that right.

It isn’t until Grey Worm moves past him that Jon is jarred from his haze. Startled by the dismissal, the blade bite that never comes. He can’t seem to tear his eyes off her, but he calls behind him, “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Avenge your queen,” he growls.

There’s a heavy silence. Then, “I will not forsake her last command of me.” Voice hard, the Unsullied declares, “Daenerys Stormborn’s last wish will be honored.”

“Her wish?”

“Spare Jon Snow.”

**+**

_**“If there is no one beside you when your soul embarks, I will follow you into the dark…”** _

_Spare Jon Snow_ , she commanded.

And so Jon Snow is spared.

He’s left here wandering in hell.

Jon watches from the cliffside while Dany’s people build her a pyre on the beach, mourning their khaleesi, queen, _mhysa_. These people here on the island, they don’t remember her as a monster that burned children. She’ll never be that to them. She’ll always be something else. Something greater.

Grey Worm has taken control of the Dragon Queen’s legacies, keeping her armies from falling into chaos, killing any challenger that makes moves of dissent. Dothraki have not fallen in line gladly, still thirsty for fire and blood, for raping and reaving. There’s been a lot of death since she’s been gone. But her Unsullied are unfaltering. Grey Worm was her commander, her ko, and so he is able to keep the khalasar together, claim it as khal in the Great Khaleesi’s wake.

It won’t last, but so far, he’s won every challenge.

It only has to last until they’re on their ships sailing home.

Let her imploding hordes be an Essos problem.

Jon doesn’t care.

So long as his sisters are safe…

There’s no care left for him to give the world.

He’s just so tired.

He remembers dying, blood in the snow, betrayed by his black brothers. He remembers the void. He remembers returning, dragged back against his will, revived by a witch that had no business denying him peace. He’d wanted to lay down his sword then. _So tired. Finished. Just go. Somewhere warm. And rest._ But he couldn’t, because there was Sansa and Winterfell and war. He’d been numb down to the soul and cold down to the bone. He’d been dead, regardless of the witch’s resurrection.

It was Dany that brought him back to life.

He remembers sinking into her, getting lost in those bright eyes, what a revelation the moment was, his love for her, thinking…

_This. Yes. This is what the Lord of Light brought me back for. Not the Night King, but for her. To be hers._

For a painfully sharp second, he thinks of Melisandre, thinks of any Red witch resurrecting her, as he was. But it’s impossible. If she was brought back, they would only be in the same position that had her thrust herself on his blade to begin with. Wouldn’t they? But what if… What if it’s good enough, the world believing her gone? The Dragon Queen had to die, but what if Dany doesn’t? They could let Daenerys Targaryen die here on Dragonstone, and Dany could be revived, and they could go somewhere warm, far away, and just be. They could…

_No._

Shame churns in his stomach at the sudden swell of brightness that nearly propelled him down to the beach to stop them from lifting her body to its pyre.

_No._

The possibility haunts him. But he won’t try. He can’t.

_Let her rest._

That night, they all wonder if she will remain forever the Unburnt. But whatever magic made her the Mother of Dragons evidently died with Dany, because he stands vigil in the distance, and as the flames die out by dawn, there’s nothing left but ash. And isn’t that so horribly fitting? After everything she’s done, everything she’d fought for, Daenerys Stormborn’s legacy ends up only ash.

Her last wish wasn’t a mercy.

It was a curse.

Grey Worm should have killed him with her.

**+**

**_“The Winged Shadow darkens the sun…”_ **

Raining fire. Ash and bone and black earth. A smoke sky.

That’s what becomes of the world.

In the wake of the Dragon Queen’s demise, Drogon becomes what the Night King could only dream of. The world ends, not in ice as they had spent so many years dreading, but in fire. The fire of a son’s wrath.

Remnant armies go to war against fire in the dark.

It’s no use. There’s no fighting a shadow in the sky. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Fire consumes everything. Fire has no mercy.

They thought the mother was the monster all along. They had no idea just how immensely she restrained her children, leashed her dragons to shield the world. They hadn’t begun to imagine.

What did they expect? They ruined his mother, so the world burns.

Dragon Wrath of Westeros, indeed.

**+**

_**“The Night Wolf saves no one…”** _

Arya returns in defeat, sinks down beside her brother’s chair, seeking solace where there is none to find. His eyes are as empty of emotion as ever. As lifeless, as inhuman. It is like looking for comfort from the Night King. When there was still Jon, she could ignore that knowledge. She could turn to her other brother in need. Now that Jon is gone, now that everything is gone, Bran’s emptiness is blinding.

“You knew. All along, you knew this would happen. Everything. Cersei, the Long Night, Daenerys, the Winged Shadow. You knew. And you did _nothing_. You didn’t even warn us.”

“It is not my place to change. I am a watcher.”

Bitterness chokes her. Cold, angry, condemning, “What’s the point of watching the world end?”

**+**

_**“Not today, but yesterday…”** _

Arya brings Bran down through the burning Riverlands to the Isle of Faces, into the Gods Eye, because he needs its power. With most of Winterfell and its Godswood charred to ash, this is all that is left to them of the Old Gods.

Pushing his chair up to the knotted ancient sprawling trees, he says, “Leave me to the roots.” So she lifts him out of the chair and lays him among the snarl before distancing herself.

“What are you going to change?” she asks again, for the hundredth time.

“The last I did this, I reached too long backward. I burned out the mind of my host. I need to be cautious. Needlepoint, not a hammer.”

“That’s not my question.”

As always, he ignores her. He winds himself through the roots and his eyes go white without another word. No goodbye, no guidance, no flicker of emotion. She long ago accepted the fact that her little brother died Beyond the Wall, and only the Three-Eyed Raven returned. His head falls back and a shrill shriek of wind forces her out of the wood, back to the water edge, smoke in the sky blurring out the sun.

Bran is lost to the far reaches of the past and she is alone.

**+**

_**“War is done. War was never begun. What now?”** _

She wakes with a ragged scream trapped in her throat, gasping for air, hand slamming to her chest as if she can keep the blood from spilling out. But there is no blood. There is no blade. She is safe and untouched in her bed. She is warm and whole and who she should be, with only the vague wisps of nauseous disorientation leaving its mark in ways she cannot explain, answers lingering at the back of her mind that she cannot fathom, answers to questions she cannot even recall.

Silk falling around her, she leaves the inner chamber and ventures across the atrium, stepping out to the open veranda, drawn to the fresh wind. She gazes across a colorful sunrise kissing the desert, glimmering off the blue rivers of Meereen, and she feels a sudden confusing rush of nostalgia and relief. As if she’d been missing this place. As if she’d been gone and longing desperately to return. What a strange sensation. This city is a means to an end, not her home. And yet she pines.

Missandei comes to find her eventually, a soft touch to her bare shoulder, concern on her face. There too, another rush of relief, this time so intense and immense that it nearly knocks her to her knees. Tears brim in her eyes and she chokes out a harsh breath, something like a sob. It makes no sense. Her arms are around the woman, locked tight at her neck, clutching her so desperately close. What has happened? Why does she feel this way? She doesn’t understand. And neither does Missandei.

When she asks what is wrong, Dany just says, “I had the most visceral dreams.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a paragraph or so of Dany/Daario, so if that bothers you, just skim past it. And a hint of Dany/Yara here and there.

**I HEAR THE BELLS**   
**[they call to me]**

**+**

_**“Denial is the death of deliverance…”** _

_“Your reign is over.”_

_“My reign has just begun.”_

Crushing the Great Masters as they siege Meereen is one of the most satisfying moments in her tumultuous life. She’d spent so long leashing herself, leashing her dragons, at the behest of small men. To finally shake loose of her chains feels invigorating. There is no doubt, no shame, no fear. Her children send several flagships of the armada crumbling into the sea under a surge of fire and the rest surrender. The only undeserving to suffer are those of the slaves manning the ships she made example of, and for that collateral, she feels pangs of remorse, but a few fallen for the victory of all is something she can live with. They thought to crush her and her freedmen under their boot heels once more and she is made stronger for it.

_“They can live in my new world or they can die in their old one.”_

The way her days ring so eerily familiar threatens to disturb her, but she pushes the sensation aside and focuses on the path that lies ahead.

_“It will mean blood on your hands.”_

_“The blood of my enemies. Not the blood of innocents.”_

The path that lies ahead is a treacherous one. As she finds herself on yet another significant precipice, she reevaluates many assumptions. She takes a good hard look at her surroundings, her advantages, her liabilities, her methods.

Her singular grand plan.

Lannisters were the downfall of her family before she was ever born. They are fated to become her downfall as well. Suddenly, inexplicably, she is very sure of this. In the unexplainable way that she was sure walking into her husband’s burning pyre would not mean the death of her, but a new beginning, a birth of greatness. She is sure again. Whatever possessed her to give the little lion man so much sway over her mind?

 _He will betray you_ , a dark voice whispers in the hush as she watches Tyrion, as he tries to temper her scorched ground strategies. Makes reprehensible deals with slaveholders in her absence, ignores the greater insights of her two most trusted friends, her two most knowledgeable advisors on the matters, leading her freed city to the edge of ruin then trying to convince her to still restrain herself in its havoc.

Men like him would let men like Grey Worm be cut and sold, let women like Missandei stay in chains, endure their entire lives in suffering and indignity, for the sake of comfort for an evil class, for the sake of easy politics.

No, let him give her that concerned look, that look a sensible man gives an irrational monster. For that is what they are, what they must be. Sensible men, those that profit off the backs of the suffering, those that maintain the corrupt establishment. Monsters, those willing to do whatever it takes to change the face of an unfair world. She will not allow a Lannister or men of his ilk to ever again make her doubt herself and what she knows and what she stands for. She will not crumble. She will not waver.

He has valuable insight into the minds of men like him, the minds of her enemies, and the political and cultural landscape of her so foreign home. That is why she will keep him close, spare consideration for his words, but she will not give him undue influence. No more will she be led astray.

_“They don’t like the idea of a woman leading a khalasar.”_

_“They will like it far less when I am done with them.”_

As the masters sent into her city are cut down by her faithful Grey Worm, as the armada they sailed into her bay give up so easily under the beat of her children’s wings, she turns her attention to the enemy at her near west, the enemy that commanded them forth in its hubris of being her ruin.

Volantis will fall before she decides to venture any further westward.

With no delay, Dothraki ride out across the Painted Mountains and down the Demon Road to take her enemies swiftly. There is nowhere left for the Great Masters to retreat to, nowhere left to hide, to lounge in undeserved luxury and plot against her. She has claimed this place for her own, these people for her own, which she will never relinquish. There will never be a return of slavery to this Bay of Dragons.

_“If blood is your desire, then blood shall flow.”_

What to do with her enemies, that is a simple solution.

It’s the other things inside her that prove the true dilemmas.

Daario, for example.

He takes liberties, forgetting himself the more he’s grown comfortable in her bed, and appears at the end of the hard night in her chambers without summons, something she has warned him of before. She is standing over the war table, staring at shadows and flame across the planning maps. He comes up behind her, his hands on her, his beard scratching her skin as he kisses her neck, something he’s done a dozen times. One hand smoothes across her stomach, another bunching the skirt of her dress, easing it upward. He’s playful and warm, trying to distract her. And for a moment, for a moment, she leans into his touch.

Her eyes close and her spine arches and she sighs. His chest is strong behind her, pressing into her, supporting her. His hands are familiar.

When he urges her forward into the table, meaning to bend her over it, she almost lets him. She has every intention of letting him. Why shouldn’t she? Daario is her lover. He is loyal and loving. Her body is tense. Stressed. It has been neglected and battered for months now. She has not been touched with kindness, with comfort, has not been ministered over or worshipped the way he will worship her. She could do with some easy pleasure right about now.

And yet…

And yet…

Her heart spikes inexplicably, not with arousal, but with distress. Her limbs start shaking and go nerveless, as if her breaths suddenly can’t get air to them. She feels like a caged animal, frozen, torn between flight or fight, needing to break free. She tries to bury it down, tries to ignore it, tries to conquer it. She spins out of his grasp, shoves him into the nearest chair, straddles him. Determined to take what she needs to relax herself. To take the attentions he offers without ulterior motives.

When she kisses him, it is madly, harsher than she’s ever kissed him. Almost frenzied, almost punishing. Punishing for no reason. Angry for no reason. Her fingers twist painfully in his hair, forcing his neck back sharply enough to make him grunt, his surprised laugh only aggravating her further. He is still playful and warm, still loves her, and that burns in her veins, churns in her stomach, scrapes at her skin like wolf claws.

Thoughtlessly, she swipes her tongue up the seal of his mouth in an odd motion that jars her to a grinding halt. _Wolf claws. Wolf claws._

What do wolves have to do with anything?

Taking advantage of her ebb, Daario hooks an arm across her backside and surges to his feet, carries her over to her bed. Lays her in the silk, bearing down on her. As he has done before, as he was welcome to. Her dress is pulled apart and his beard scrapes the valley of her breasts before she unfreezes, snaps free of her fleeting passivity. The panic is back, overtaking the anger once more, drowning out impatience and domination with a helplessly urgent aversion. She shoves him off. Casts him out.

“Stop. Leave me.”

“Dany—”

“Go!”

She doesn’t understand why she’s so upset. Why she trembles. Why her heart races. Where did this come from? This fear, this pain, this longing? Where was this so visceral reaction sprung from?

_“My queen, now and always.”_

Why does it hurt? Why does love hurt? Where does this love come from? This love aching in her chest that she cannot name and will not recognize?

Memories at the edges of her awareness. She refuses to look.

_“Are you a slave?”_

_“Are you a sheep?”_

_“You’re a dragon. Be a dragon.”_

Fragments of a forgotten dream plague her, hard as she tries to ignore it. Echoes of a past she never lived, a future she cannot abide.

She is doing the right thing. She has a good heart. Far more people love her than despise her. Far more people cry out for her to liberate them than those who fear her arrival. She is doing the right thing. So why does she feel so terrified, so paralyzed at a crossroads, whenever she comes to make a decision moving forward? These fragments are to blame, she knows, but they are more vague assaults of emotion lashing at her than any substantial intelligence.

_“What kept me standing? Faith. In myself. In Daenerys Targaryen.”_

_That was where I went wrong_ , she thinks, sure of it, though she can’t recall ever truly going wrong. Except for the screams of burning children which haunt her soul, which she tells herself she dreamed up. _Losing faith. Listening to faithless men._

It will not happen again.

There is merely shadows of a white wolf in her dreams. Nothing more.

**+**

_**“A meeting of pirate queens and dragonriders…”** _

The Greyjoy siblings are an interesting sort with an interesting offer.

They’ve brought her a hundred ships with fierce ironborn to sail them, a pledge of fealty, in exchange for her support of the exiled Yara’s quest to reclaim her Salt Throne from a vicious usurper uncle who hunts her down like a dog. An uncle who is, at this very moment, in the process of building a brand new shining Iron fleet to buy Dany’s hand in marriage.

So he can fuck her, use her, slit her throat once she’s won all he wants, and take what’s hers.

There’s a visceral lurch in her stomach when she hears the name _Euron Greyjoy_ , a fervent flare of pure seething rage in her chest that brings her to her feet when she had been relaxed and welcoming a moment ago. Her blood is boiling, keening at the need for fire and blood. She’s not sure why, but she’s becoming better at navigating the strangeness since her … _awakening_. She’s learned to trust those instincts when they rear up. They may only be slivers, shards, fragments, flashes of intense emotion rather than clear memory, but they are powerful and persuasive.

She gets the impression…

Ah, yes. This man sunk her sweet green dragon into the sea, her son, and slaughtered half her allies. She remembers now. Remembers the bite of wind, the pitch of Drogon’s dive, her wild scream. The tidal wave Rhaegal’s corpse made in the waters. No context, just an imperative.

Euron Greyjoy will die slowly. Excruciatingly.

He will never come anywhere near her dragons.

She calms herself, reels the turmoil in, calculates quickly.

“Spread the word to your men that Daenerys Targaryen has turned you away,” she says, just as negotiations were going so well. Startling the siblings, startling even Tyrion. “Send several of your ships outward in either direction, to toil or idle, I don’t care. So long as they stop in every port they pass, drinking and carousing with loud mouths.”

Yara is grimly searching her cold expression. “I don’t understand.”

Dany wings one brow. “Don’t you?”

“Ah,” Tyrion comprehends, neither disapproving nor impressed.

“Tell them Daenerys Targaryen has no interest in crown pretenders and a hundred ships is not nearly enough to satisfy her armada. She will wait for the rightful king of the Iron Islands to come before her with a better offer.”

Confusion and dejection on their faces morphs to excitement and pride at the prospects unfolding before their imaginations. With a devious grin, Yara drawls, “And here I was with low expectations.”

“While we wait, your fleet cannot be seen in my bay. In the meantime, I have a way you may be of use to me. A way before bloodshed to prove your commitment to this … relationship.”

“Anything,” Yara vows.

The Greyjoys have come before Dany, treating for alliance, and so she shall give them one. Of one sort or another. Between Yara’s enjoyable flirting and Theon’s forthright devotion to his sister’s superior merit, she is charmed. She finds herself wanting them as allies, wanting them loyal, even if she’s not ready to give them just what they ask for in the way they ask for it. It’s a reasonable request, a fair bargain, but she will not sail west just yet. Despite Tyrion’s worry that promising the Greyjoys their desires will open the door to all of Westeros demanding independence and thinking her malleable once she conquers the Seven Kingdoms, she meets Yara’s grasp, gripping strongly.

No more reaving or raping. A new era. A better world.

She thinks she’s going to like this alliance.

**+**

_**“Of tending to the bruised bodies and singed souls…”** _

“What is it like there? In Naath?” she asks Missandei. “Is it as warm as Meereen? Is there more color?”

She’s unwinding her queen’s complex arrangement of braids for the night, sitting by candlelight, speaking softly, while Grey Worm stands ever vigilant at the entryway. “From what little I remember…”

“It’s alright if you’d rather not,” Dany gently offers.

She shakes her head, the troubled expression fading for a heartfelt smile, small but powerful. Her fingers fall still, entwined with silver. A dreamy haze enters her dark eyes as she tentatively expounds, “It is very warm, but not of the dry heat like this desert. It gets sticky, I think. Stifling in a way that makes the air hard to breathe in. But the saltwater breeze off the sea keeps a good balance. And the color… There are so many colors, Your Grace. It is lush. Vibrant. Cerulean skies, azure waters, white sands, a hundred shades of green in the trees. Brown bark, silver bark. Green leaf, pink leaf. There are beaches and valleys and rolling hills and jagged mountains, but they are all smothered in rich green. That is what I remember. Mostly green. And the smell of the sea coming in through the open thatch.”

“I should like to see it.”

“You should,” Missandei assents, resuming her work.

Dany reaches up and clasps a hand around her friend’s gentle fingers. Gentle and precise and soft to touch and always kind. She brings those fingers down to her lap, forcing Missandei to join her on the bench. She searches her ever impassive features thoroughly for a long moment before turning her eyes to her lap, watching her thumb stroke absently across those delicate knuckles. Dany’s hands have become brusque things, like a man’s, calloused and coarse from riding Drogon. It almost feels as if she shouldn’t touch those hands, Missandei’s skin so clean and unblemished, almost as if she’s tainting her, as if she would hurt her.

_I won’t. I won’t let that happen. I won’t let the blood on my hands soak into her. I won’t let the violence touch her._

“Do you think I would be welcome there?” she wonders, hardly a whisper now, lost in her reverie. “If I promised to leave the fire and violence behind when I come, would you want me there? Or does that thought discomfort you?”

There’s a puzzled frown marring her brow now, but a faint quirk to her lips filled with generosity. “It is a lovely thought.” Then she quips, “But you wouldn’t have to leave fire behind, Your Grace, only violence.”

Instead of laughing it off and moving on, Dany pursues with increasing intent, her intensity growing the deeper she gazes into her. She tugs firmly on their clasped hands. “What do you want, Missandei?”

Her eyes slide past the queen to find the Unsullied below, and suddenly Dany is intruding on an excruciatingly intimate moment, but she can’t turn away. The reflex is just that, a reflex, fleeting. Shyness brings her chin down, her eyes sliding away again. She chooses her words with careful consideration. “I want impossible things.”

“I make impossible things happen every day. Tell me.”

“I want to go home. And I want to stay.”

“Stay in Meereen?”

“Stay with my queen. Help my queen.”

“And if your queen had no more use for you?” she poses.

Undaunted by the surface cruelty of those words, Missandei merely lifts her chin, crooks a brow at her. “I would suggest she underestimates my usefulness. She will always be in need of me.”

At that, Dany does laugh then. Because it is humorous in the tone she says it, and because it is true, and because she will cry if she doesn’t laugh. Because that truth changes none of what Dany must do in the coming days.

_“You cannot claim them all, princess.”_

_“I can. And I will.”_

With Missandei’s words ringing in her ears, she begins to enact her next intentions. She approaches Grey Worm privately, gives him his task without much elaboration. She frames it as a necessary front in her war on slavers, an easy framing since it is sincere, if not her first motive.

The isle of Naath is a favorite supply ground for slavers and raiders, because of their pacifism. They make music, not war. They refuse to pick up a weapon, won’t even kill their animals, only feeding from the land, fruits and vines that nature provides. They make the perfect slaves, so very subservient, so pliable. To cut the slave trade at the knees, it is not enough to outlaw the practice and punish the demand, but their supply must be starved out. So she sets her Unsullied commander about querying through his legion, seeking volunteers eager to commit to such a duty.

A century or so of Unsullied to safeguard the isle of Naath from invaders.

“For how long?” he questions.

“For always,” she answers.

If he is surprised, if he is suspicious, if he is pleased, if he disapproves, there is no sign of it in his stoic features. She finds herself disappointed at the lacking reaction, hoping to have some insight into his thoughts. Which is ironic, because she has enough irritation to bear from Tyrion’s fervent disagreements. She needs all the soldiers she can get for the coming conquering, yes, she knows. She tires of his incessant dissent, his single-minded focus on the west. But she bore that with Ser Jorah and Ser Barristan all through her march up the Slaver’s Bay cities and they eventually came to see things her way. Tyrion will learn true empathy, or he will learn to be quiet on the matter.

Eventually, the upheaval from the siege settles and her city finds its footing once more. And so, she leaves Daario and his Second Sons to watch over her bay, the Common Council legislature to continue its Restoration and Reform agenda, and Tyrion with much less oversight authority than he had the last time she left Meereen in trusted hands. She takes Missandei and Grey Worm and the chosen Unsullied, boarded on a small contingent of Yara’s dispersed fleet, and they set sail together southwest down the Summer Sea.

_“Perhaps they don’t want to be conquered.”_

_“You didn’t conquer them. You liberated them.”_

Diplomacy. That is what this trip shall be driven by. She must remember that. She intends to keep her promise to Missandei, leaving fire and violence behind as they sail south, and she foresees no trouble in that regard. She just needs to make her case carefully to the Naathi people, so that they don’t mistake her intentions for aggression. She has no interest in conquering the free peaceful people. Only to ally. Only to shield. Unsullied will keep them safe and ask for nothing in return but shelter on their island, simply because it serves her purposes in the bay.

Simply for Missandei.

But she is no fool. She doesn’t expect this diplomatic mission to be effortless, must anticipate a good deal of resistance and distrust from a people so heavily hit by the slave trade, so accustomed to ships of soldiers coming ashore and stealing away with their children, burning their villages. She has planned for this to take time and delicacy. She has planned to prove herself.

Though she is uncertain whether the Greyjoys are the right choice for escort.

“It’s only a voyage to paradise, Yara. Don’t look so disappointed,” she teases, just the hint of a smile at her mouth edges as she comes to stand beside the woman on deck, wind blowing her silver locks off her shoulder, salt stinging her eyes.

“Is that how I look?” she grouses.

“It’s been a week and you haven’t stopped sulking yet.”

“When you asked me to prove my commitment to you, I imagined something a little more challenging than playing ferry to your eunuchs.”

“There’ll be time enough for that, I suspect.”

Along the way, she’s found her jagged and uncouth. She drinks too much, whores too unsubtly, and is quick to become violent. Necessary traits, she suspects, for an ironborn woman, especially one intent on holding the Salt Throne, dependent on keeping her roughneck sailors in line. Her promise of no more reaving and raping, the prospect of enforcing that among her men, looks to be as arduous a challenge as Dany has found herself enforcing the same among the Dothraki. But she has also found that Yara is a woman of her word and fully intends for whatever lengths it requires to fulfill that promise. It is early still in their acquaintance, but she suspects she’s match for the challenge.

Rather than stride off and sulk some more at the call-out, Yara turns her body into the queen’s, offering her undivided attention and a decidedly better attitude. She resorts to what is fast becoming her frequent flirting routine, reminding Dany of Daario’s initial dogged pursuit, though she finds this somewhat more gratifying than that amusing annoyance had been.

“What of more pleasurable pursuits, My Queen? Will we have time for those?”

For she is afforded so little opportunity to feel playful, Dany wholeheartedly intends to have a little fun flirting back before the caw of a passing flock reaches her ears under the roaring waves. She looks skyward and her spirits plummet. She goes pale, queasy, a dark shadow at the edge of her vision, a dizziness striking her suddenly. Blackbirds flying overhead…

“A bad omen,” Yara tells her, frowning at their flight when she follows Dany’s gaze. But then she touches the queen’s elbow with a rough grasp and grins again. “I don’t pay those much mind. Omens haven’t hurt me yet.”

“Omens can’t hurt us,” Dany acquiesces faintly, but she is distracted, distressed. She pulls away, retreats below deck to rest.

_“Yes. All men must die. But we are not men.”_

Only in the dark, she feels free to let out what must remain locked within. She sobs and shudders and searches for solace where there is none to find. There is no solace for her. There is no salvation.

She dreams of a baby at her breast, not a mangled sack of deformed bones but a hale and wonderful creature, no scales or tails or broken wings.

She dreams of wolves and dragons and lions.

She dreams of running with wolves across endless green moors. She dreams of jet black curls between her fingers and sad bronze eyes. She dreams of firelight and cold cave walls sketched with ancient warnings. She dreams of snow… Vast and inescapable and just as alluring as it is terrifying. Ice and snow, grey cliffs and a crisp white waterfall. A man’s arms around her, holding her close. Happiness.

_“We could stay a thousand years. No one would find us.”_

_“It’s cold up here for a southern girl.”_

_“So keep your queen warm.”_

She doesn’t know why she’s become so fixated on wolves and snow, but it is not healthy for her peace of mind. It is not… No, she won’t wonder why. She knows. She mustn’t. She refuses to. But she knows. Something ancient and essential inside her knows. And she is losing the battle. She fears for how much longer she can hold back the tide. How long can she look away? It presses on her, becoming crushing.

The screams, the stench, the stone as it crumbles and shatters.

The sharp cold of metal driving inside. The warm arms around her, the wrong arms, the wrong kindness, the wrong love.

Missandei tends to check in on her periodically, even if she’s dismissed her service for the night. For once, Dany doesn’t hide her face in the pillow and go still, pretending at peaceful sleep. She’s curled in bed, clutching her unmarred heart, crying quietly to the jostling rock of the ship on the water. It draws her interpreter inward. Her hand tentative on her bare shoulder, a soft, “My Queen?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Dany. Please, Missandei. Call me Dany.”

The silence that follows is loaded and unending. She feels her hesitation, her discomfort, and her worry. Letting herself be weak, letting herself be needy, she snatches up the hand on her shoulder and pulls it closer, turns over towards her, urges her into the bed beside her. She doesn’t need to ask for more. Missandei just holds her.

“This hurt will pass. _Dany_ … It will pass.”

This hurt? Yes, this hurt. That’s what it is that’s eating her alive from the inside. This indescribable hurt in her chest like a dagger driven in. This hurt that is love. Grief. Guilt. Shame. Longing. Bitterness. Betrayal. Rage. This hurt that threatens to leave her hollow.

 _With the kind of love I’ve been dreaming of_ , she thinks, _it’s better to spend life lonely and unloved._


	4. Chapter 4

**I HEAR THE BELLS**   
**[they call to me]**

**+**

_**“Isle of Butterflies, black hearts of glass…”** _

As she walks a winding road of ash and snow, the raven alights in her path, so she turns the other way.

When it perches on her balcony, she seals the shutters.

Yet its cawing echoes in her head all throughout the day as if she’s carrying a cruel ghost with her. A hundred thousand ghosts in her wake.

Perhaps she is a fool after all, because she had expected Naath to be paradise. And it is that, very much so. It is lovely. Breathtaking. Tranquil. And the people are more welcoming than any she’s ever come across. They live a joyful existence, joy and easy friendship and appreciation for life everywhere she turns. But she has found no paradise here, not for herself. She is haunted, plagued by her nightmares, sickened. She hides it well, smiling widely and laughing carelessly with the villagers, reveling around the beach bonfires at orange hued sunsets and under starry night skies. She hides it well.

They are not nightmares.

Negotiations with the Naathi chiefs goes smoother than she expected. After initial suspicions and introductions, the Matron steps forward and cradles Missandei’s face in both her wrinkled hands, telling Dany in halting Valyrian, “You have returned our stolen sons and daughters home. For that, you will be welcome here, Silver Queen.”

Tensions aren’t magically evaporated, but with Missandei serving as ambassador, it is a promising start. From those opening days, it only gets more hopeful, despite the occasional altercation or pushback from certain chiefs, most of whom hold onto their distrust of outsiders and disdain for the inevitable natures of soldiers and pirates. The Matron presiding over her chiefs is more amenable to arrangements, but they don’t roll over unthinkingly.

A commerce pact is agreed upon, a new trade route opened to Meereen.

The Unsullied contingent is accepted onto the island as their new home, as its new protectors, and set about constructing barracks for their housing under Naathi guidance, once Daenerys has bartered plots of land for them. Simple structures, set high on stilts to avoid the wash of the rising tide for that time of season she’s informed it floods inland. They are just open boxes of wood and thatch and windows down the long walls with no shutters yet, sleeping mats in rows on the roughly hewn floor. It will improve in comfort, given time and goods. They wanted to be sure of their place here before they sailed anything but the bare bones of building materials all this way. For now, they will suffice.

The only urgent measures are woven drapes for the openings to seal out the sacred butterflies when they ungarb and rest.

The next structures to be built, the caveat in negotiations that came up against the most fervent resistance from the natives, are the security measures. The defensible strongholds and watchtowers. Naathi are quick and clever, with underground paths and hidden traps, ways to get away in a hurry, ways to hide in plain sight, but nowhere to defend themselves against attack. Because they do not defend. Their Lord of Harmony forbids violence of any kind, even that which would save them.

“We told you, outlander,” Missandei says, interpreting their unhappy words. “You are welcome on our isle so long as you accept our Harmony.”

“We are only here to protect your people from slavers. To end the raiding. How can the Unsullied accomplish that if they lay down their weapons under all circumstances? If they are not allowed to prepare for the worst?”

“Our Lord of Harmony is our shield, not your soldiers. Our butterflies protect us, not your spears.”

“I understand that,” Daenerys responds, more tightly than she means to, because it takes great restraint to remember patience when she has a fire curling in her belly. It takes great restraint to catch her tongue on aggressive words like, _Your butterflies didn’t protect my Missandei, did they?!_

She has no patience for faith in unseen gods when it stands in the way of necessity or survival or justice. She understands their reasons for belief. The butterflies have somewhat protected them over their millennia. Their butterfly fever has deterred quite a few voyagers. Bitten by the black and white butterflies, foreigners fall deadly ill, but the natives are immune. Yes, she can see why they would lay faith there. But she is Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, and she does not rely on any gods.

But this is their home and she is not here to conquer, so she must be patient.

It is a good thing she left Drogon behind.

He always does react heatedly to her flaring temper.

In the end, it is not Dany that convinces them. She is sent away, banished from the Dome as the chiefs argue. Days later, it is Missandei that has secured the covenant of their settlement here.

Missandei has secured so much more than she could’ve asked for. She lifts a thin twine with an odorous satchel to Dany’s neck and ties it together under her braids. “For protection. It will ward off the butterflies.”

Wrinkling her nose, Dany complains, “Quite an unpleasant tang.”

“Better than fever and blood sweats, Your Grace,” Missandei counters with an amused smile. “They’ve agreed to blend enough satchels to adorn the outlanders.”

That wouldn’t require much. Most of those chosen Unsullied taken to Naath were originally Naathi slaves. Immune like the rest of the natives.

“You do excellent work, ambassador.”

“Thank you, My Queen.”

“Dany,” she entreats.

“ _Dany_.”

It’s a beautiful start.

During her stay, the queen is offered a shanty on an isolated stretch of beach, privacy and the bare minimum of luxury. It is crude and it is beautiful and she dreams of being happy here. Of staying. She could, she thinks, given time enough. But it would mean hiding. From the world, from her enemies, from herself. And eventually, the world would catch up, and it would bring fire and blood here to find her, and these people and their peace would be left to ash and ruin. Because of her.

No, Daenerys Stormborn was never meant for paradise.

A dragon is not built for peace.

But late in the night, with the moon casting silver shadows across her bed and the reassuring roar of the tide, ebbing in and washing at the sand before flowing out again, the lap and the hum and the cry of insects and animals in the trees around her… In the night, she likes to pretend that she could be. That she could leave Daenerys behind and be nobody. Just a girl. A girl in a shanty on a beach, waiting for someone to come along and love her. Waiting, but content in the meantime.

She likes to dream. To fantasize. But the echoes will always resound. The ghosts will make themselves known. The raven will return.

There’s no hiding from her sins.

There’s no escaping her destiny either.

When the imagined screams in the distance grow too loud, she deserts her bed and wanders the undiscovered wilds, sometimes letting her guard trail unobtrusively in the dark, sometimes ordering them to stay behind. She’ll pace the empty beach and watch moonlight glimmer off the black sea. She’ll explore the daunting jungle that lies beyond the sand. She’ll hike mountain roads and admire the sunrise kissing across Naath. Sometimes, she’ll take Missandei with her, clutching her hand, watching her face closely as she rediscovers all that she’d been forced to forget and the joy blossoms.

What about Dany? What she is forced to forget. Does she remember? What does she remember? It’s all a snarled knot in her head. They’re just dreams. Hazy forgotten dreams. They’re not real. They’re not prophecies. They’re too convoluted for that, too intimate, too specific, too horrific. They’re just dreams. A sign of creeping madness perhaps. A sign that she hasn’t escaped her father’s curse.

She hides it well. She watches Missandei’s joy blossom. She revels in that.

When the barracks are finished, Grey Worm comes to her with a private request. “This one would like…”

“Go on.”

“This one would like if to build Missandei of Naath a home for her own.”

Dany’s heart lurches. “She’s decided to stay?”

“No. But she should have a home here in her homeland.”

“For while we’re here? And for when she returns?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever you need,” she promises.

Despite resisting the flood of memories, it inevitably rushes in like the tide…

It rushes in and she wakes with silent screams strangled to stricken silence in her throat as she swings violently upwards, flings herself out of bed, stumbling hysterically to the window to clutch its ledge and suck in sharp heaves of Summer Sea air. She’s sobbing and and shaking and her cheeks are wet yet she makes no sound but for the broken gasping.

It brings her to her knees.

_What did I do?_

_What have I become?_

They could have saved her. Any one of them could have saved her, and in doing so, saved King’s Landing. He could have saved her. She could have saved herself. As she had always done. Why didn’t she save herself? Why did she allow them to make her so weak? There was a very long time when all she ever had was herself. To rely on, to trust, to console. She was alone and unloved with enemies wherever she chose to turn. Wherever she ran. Betrayers, abusers. Why did she forget how to be alone? Why did she let herself need them? It destroyed her. It destroyed everything.

_The man I love betrayed me. The man I love murdered me._

_Kiss me, then kill me. How could you? How dare you?_

_Liar._

_Traitor._

No.

No.

A stranger did that.

She loves no man.

Down the beach, soulful music interrupts the night cadences, soothing her panic, chasing away the ghosts and their agonized screams. She sits on the floor beneath the open window, hugging her knees to her chest, painstakingly calming the wild distress that threatens to thrust her into a pit of despair. An abyss of madness.

Once she can breathe again, once she has gathered up all her jagged pieces and wrapped them together again, Dany pulls herself up and ventures out. She can’t bear to be alone tonight. She can’t bear the quiet.

Bonfires flare high like beacons in the dark, Naathi circling the flames with dancing and singing, luring her closer. The siren song of their joyful connections is irresistible. It draws her inexorably, but she can’t bring herself to join them truly. There’s too much shame. There’s too much fear. She feels too alien. Too cursed.

Hours into the festivities, Missandei finally tracks her down, sits in the sand beside her, their toes just barely brushed by the frothy splash of the tide. Dany stiffens, waiting for the concerned questioning that always follows, but something on her face in the moonlight must warn the woman off pursuing it. They sit in simple silence for a long while, listening to the music, the drums, the lap of waves, occasional shouts and laughter. Once or twice, she starts to reach for the hand near her, desperate for something to latch onto, desperate to remind herself that she is human and _connected_. Not a dragon all alone in the world. But she stops herself, pulls back, bites down on the weakness.

Dany is always aware of the power imbalance between them and when she is taking advantage of it. When she needs skin contact, a hand, a hug, someone to hold her at night. It is innocent, something any friends would do thoughtlessly. But she is queen and Missandei her servant and that makes it different. Sometimes, she is too needy to not be selfish. Tonight, she finds that any sort of selfishness leaves ash on her tongue.

“Grey Worm has shown me the shanty you commissioned for me.”

Snapped from her shell, she frowns at her friend but Missandei’s gaze keeps to the distance, where starry black sky and reflective undulations of sea meld. “Oh, I did?” Frown falling, she grins slyly, shattered heart lightening. “I don’t suppose he mentioned it was he that came to his queen with the request?”

There’s something like a sigh of relief that takes Missandei’s tension away, a small wonderful smile at her lips as she dips her chin and murmurs, “Of course he didn’t.”

“If it had been my idea, would that have disappointed you?” she teases.

But her reply is sober. “I was worried you were trying to get rid of me.”

“What? Why would I—” Dany stops herself. “I would never want to be rid of you, my dear Missandei. But I do want the best for you.”

“This is why I love you.”

The ache swells up in her chest again, just as she’d almost forgotten it. She’s short of breath again, pain constricting her throat. “As I love you,” she whispers raggedly, words stolen away by the sea breeze.

In her mind, in her memory, in a life that never happened, will never happen, they stand together at the rail of a ship, the cold bite of ice in the air, huddled tight together for warmth, giggling and gossiping. A brief respite from a wasteland of grief and war. Her voice sounds almost girlish, a cadence she hasn’t heard from herself in years, as she leans in and whispers, _“There’s this thing Jon likes to do. An odd habit. He likes to … lick me. No, don’t give me that look. That’s not how I mean it. His tongue is just so… Well, anyway, I mean… I mean everywhere. Lick me everywhere. My neck, my fingers, my everything. It’s just something he does, like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. When he’s kissing me, he’ll run his tongue up from my chin across my lips to the tip of my nose in this frenetic wolf swipe. It’s… It’s the strangest kiss I’ve ever known.”_

Echoes on the wind. Images in her mind that slip away like sand between fingers. But the ache remains.

“You love him differently though,” she says, her voice gone hoarse and cracking. She swallows hard, furls her fingertips into her palms until the pain steadies her. Solidifies her in the real world. “Grey Worm. You love him. You want him.”

“Yes.”

“He makes you happy?”

“Just the thought of him makes me happier than I’ve ever been in this life.”

“Then don’t waste any more time. We’ve all wasted so much of it. We’ve all let so many chances at happiness slip by us. Once they’re gone, we never get them back. I don’t want that for you. Whatever has made you hesitate, it’s worth pushing through. He’s worth it. You’re worth it. You must grab onto the important things and never let them go. Don’t be afraid anymore.” This time, she doesn’t bite back the urge to snatch the woman’s hand, lacing their fingers, squeezing tight. Her voice has gotten stronger. She has gotten stronger. “We’re done with fear now.”

“No more fear,” Missandei agrees.

The man she loved kissed her. Then he killed her.

He killed her because he had to. Because she needed to die.

Or did she do that to herself? It’s all still so unclear.

As she follows Missandei up the beach, letting her friend tug her along, their fingers still loosely interlocked, a lightness blooms again in her chest. The dichotomy is tiring, but it is helping. She ignores the raven flickering at the edges of her memory. She follows Missandei to her new home, exploring and admiring what Grey Worm has built. The love in every board, every twining of thatch.

“Suitable for the queen’s ambassador to Naath?”

“Very much so.”

“And spacious enough to perhaps fit an Unsullied as well,” she teases, grinning wickedly, and gives their hands a quick tug that sends Missandei colliding with her, arm flung around her shoulders. The women tumble onto the plush pile of cushioning beneath the skylight in a burst of childish joyful laughter.

She loves no man.

She razed no city.

She is alive.

**+**

_**“Isle of Butterflies, blue skies of hope…”** _

The harrow of hiding from the raven has gone. With the break of the floodgates in her mind, the end of denial, comes a rush of incongruous relief beside the heartsick horror. Relief, for the fear was crushing her, and now what she feared has happened, and she is still standing. The raven has no more secrets to hurt her with. It can chase her, it can plague her, but she will not bow. She remembers. What was. What will never be. She remembers a life unlived. No more fear.

She rolls out of bed as dawn wakes her with gold sunlight and seagull cries and the cacophonous shriek of Naathi children racing through the surf. Her bed of course is merely a mountain of eclectic cushioning, softening up a sparse pallet on the scarred floorboards. Her silk gown slips off one shoulder as she clambers groggily out of the tangle and pads out to watch them play. It’s become something of a ritual for her. The two Unsullied posted at the bottom steps greet her with a unison, “ _Mhysa_ ,” as she takes a cup off a hanging hook and scoops freshwater from the barrel by the door. She sits and sips, shaking off her sleep, enjoying the sounds, the sights, the smells, and the sensations in her chest.

Awhile into her morning, troublemaking Yara hops cheerily up onto the balcony beside where she lounges. Tosses her a strange fruit. “Eat this. It’s nearly better than a good cunt licking.”

Rolling her eyes at the pirate’s crassness, she examines her gift. “What is it?”

“No idea.”

Dany digs her thumb through the gold rind and tears out a chunk of its pink insides, plump and dripping juices down her wrist, sticky between her fingers. Flavor explodes in her mouth, a hard kick of sweet and sour that startles her. “Mmm, my goodness,” she moans, sucking the flavor clear, enjoying the gush as she chews. “I am most definitely bartering a stock of these to take back with us.”

“I can do you one better, Dragon Queen. I’ve got seeds and baby trees already squirreled away on my ship and the knowledge of how to grow them,” Yara crows, brows winging as she rakes her gaze up and down the length of her, lingering over the sheerness of her silk. “Does that satisfy you, My Queen?”

Dany can’t help but grin. Can’t help her playful purr, “For your sake, I’m going to assume by squirreled, you mean bartered a fair exchange with the natives.”

“What else would I mean?” she volleys.

“Very well, Lady Greyjoy,” she returns, earning a grimace that makes her laugh. “Should you—”

An unmistakable flutter of bird wings turns her head, a sharp spike of panic and dread shivering through her body, drenching her good spirits down. The fruit falls from her nerveless fingers. _No more fear._ She casts it aside, the reflex, the instinctive recoil. She refuses to let it rule her. She refuses to lose control of her body, or her mind, or her soul. And especially not her heart.

It’s something white that lands on the rail beside her, wings flapping, cawing rudely. An exclamation of giddy relief bursts from her in a wild laugh as the seagull stirs up a fuss. She finds herself crouching for the dropped fruit, pulling pieces loose and tossing them into the sand, watching the bird search and complain.

The rest of the day is spent politicking, but when she gets a chance around dusk to slip away and explore, she comes upon a breathtaking waterfall among the jungle thick. She’s contemplating unlacing her dress and diving into the crystalline whirlpools, but she draws back as she glimpses bodies in the blue. Past the pounding din, kinky brown curls, slender arms locked around a neck, a smooth bare back. When she realizes it’s Missandei and Grey Worm, she turns around and backtracks before they can notice her, finding herself grinning like a silly girl, despite the faint ache of envy and regret felt below her vicarious joy.

And it has indeed become faint. It is no longer all consuming.

The first real test of this evolution comes one of these restless nights on the beach, when she crests a dune and finds a man sitting in the surf where she would go. She starts to retreat to her own end of the beach before she falters, reminding herself, _Connect, reach out, be open._ She can’t afford to indulge her impulses to isolate. She has to retrain herself, despite the paranoia, despite the endless enemies.

Despite the wolves in sheep clothes.

As she approaches, she recognizes his shadow as Yara’s brother and she doubts her decision, faltering again, almost turning back. Because now that the tide has rushed in, he’s not just Yara’s brother. He’s Theon Greyjoy. Theon Greyjoy. Tied so intrinsically into the Starks. Into the snow. But if she is to truly grow, truly recover, she can’t allow herself to hide from what hurts the most.

It’s not until she sits down beside him in the moonlight and watches the way he goes stiff and submissive, torn between taut skittishness and abject dejection, that she remembers he is another of the broken ones. Defiled bodies, fractured minds, battered souls. It reminds her that she is not alone in how she feels. It reminds her of what she has always tried fighting for.

“Your Grace,” he murmurs anxiously, head bowed, knuckles clenching on his knees, shying away without being brave enough to actually move. There’s an empty flagon in the sand, so she assumes he’s imbibed. Quite a bit, she’d say, going by the way his normally downcast eyes rove over her exposed skin, taking longer than could be considered discreet in absorbing the sheerness and low cut of her sleeping gown and all the loosened splay of her silver tresses, blinking dazedly, widening in horror before he wrenches his attention back to the sea.

It almost makes her laugh. They’re always so struck when they see her like this, braids undone, armor cast aside. They’re expecting the Dragon Queen and don’t know how to act when they get just Dany. It never used to happen before, before her awakening, before this island.

“There is something soothing about this place, isn’t there?”

“It is,” he responds, reluctant, withdrawn.

After a long painful silence, tempted to get up and leave him, she ventures gently instead, “Your sister intimated a little of your traumas. I cannot imagine enduring the kind of brutality you’ve seen.”

He withdraws deeper, stiffens further, but she doesn’t regret voicing the thought. She thinks of a festered wound, covered and unacknowledged, the way the fester must be drawn out before it can close well. If she is going to sit here with this man in the dark, two broken creatures, she can’t pretend.

At the shame in his eyes, she’s driven to note, “You know, there are many eunuchs among my people. Look around. We’re surrounded by men that’ve lost such essential parts of themselves. They’ve come to learn that it is not as essential as assumed.”

That startles a bitter snort from him. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but that’s shite.” Still, his tone is timid even as his words grow tentatively bolder. “You’ve got soldiers that were cut as babies. Boys that don’t know what they’re missing.”

“Perhaps,” she allows.

He’s so soft spoken, he’s almost lost to the waves. “If they did know, I doubt they’d be having conversations about their cocks with their queen. I definitely didn’t expect to be.”

Now she does laugh, a warm sound, not wanting to scare him away. He flinches from her so easily, it’s hard to decide how to treat him, what to say. Like a beaten dog. What does a dragon do with a beaten dog? But that is the sort of thinking that led her down her darkest road. She mustn’t forget she is not just dragon. She is woman.

“Do you see that light?” she asks, pointing in the distance over the dunes, rows of firelight flickering in the dark of the treeline. “Beyond that window is the lovely Missandei of Naath. The one I’ve caught you appreciating once or twice.”

Theon stutters in denial, but she waves him off.

“It’s alright. I spend time myself appreciating Missandei. My point is, right this moment, she lays in her bed, happily tangled up with my Unsullied commander. _Appreciating_ each other.”

“He wasn’t unmanned?”

“I wouldn’t say it that way. Grey Worm is quite a man. But he was cut.”

He frowns at her in confusion, forgetting a little of his discomfort now that she has him intrigued. “Then how…”

Dany blushes in the moonlight, embarrassing herself now, despite how casual she’s become with the crassness she gets from sailors and soldiers around her. Awkwardly laughing, she says, “I’m afraid I’ve no firsthand experience to advise you from. I just know that they are in love and many things happen in their bed. Things they both seem more than pleased by.”

“Oh.” He resituates in the sand, less averse to her closeness now, though she can tell he’s disappointed by her lack of the particulars, even if getting into details would’ve left them both too mortified to share the same ship again.

“I look at them and I don’t see him missing anything irrevocable from his life.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Theon acquiesces, chin back to his chest. She thinks he’ll leave it at that, but after a few moments, he braves, “But you aren’t in bed with them, are you? You can’t really know.”

“We can never really know the soul of a man,” she concurs. “But I know enough. I know he’s happy.”

“I don’t deserve to be happy,” Theon whispers.

“Neither do I,” she confesses, startling him into meeting her stare.

After that night, something inside her shifts significantly. She finds herself drawn to the Greyjoy brother, rather than repulsed. Pulled to him for the same underlying reason she had initially been afraid to near him. Of what he reminded her of, of what he connected her to, that ephemeral relation. The wolves howling on the wind at the other end of the world, echoing under their shared words.

They meet again in the sand when they can’t sleep. And again. And again. One day, she looks for him while he works with the construction teams. One day, she tags along when he rows out to the anchored fleet with restocking. One day, she finds him following her up the path that’s become her own, so she asks him to escort her along her hike. That too becomes something of a ritual.

Missandei had told her of their glorious secret treetop city, but they hadn’t trusted her to reveal it, so she and Theon settle for the mountains.

An unexpected familiarity begins to develop.

The more hours they spend sitting together in the dark, the easier his words flow. Stories of growing up a ward of Winterfell, a hostage, and she a gilded slave in the east. Eventually, it winds around to what she knew was inevitable. Theon reveals what haunts his sleep, what pulls him out to the sea. He talks of Sansa Stark. Of what they endured together at stolen Winterfell under a sadistic Bolton. He talks of leaving her behind. Needing to be steadfast at his true sister’s side, but wanting to go back and help in some way. Lady Sansa and King Jon and Winterfell. For his betrayals. To atone his sins.

Perhaps she is punishing herself. Perhaps she is walking a dangerous line. But she has always tended to play with fire.

“Theon? Tell me about Jon Snow.”

And so he does, and so she aches, and she is tempted, and she twists ruthlessly away from the horizon of that temptation.

**+**

_**“Isle of Butterflies, bastions left behind…”** _

Daenerys is consciously changing. Carefully, calculatedly. She cannot remain the cold detached queen. She cannot isolate herself. In another lifetime, she held everything inside until it imploded, and that devastated the world. She will not retread that ruinous path. It is more than just trusting the wrong people, giving the wrong people too much sway over her, making the wrong choices. It is more than trust. It is heart. It is dragon versus woman, planting trees and cultivating root growth versus scorching earth and trying to sustain herself alone in a Red Waste. So she seeks change.

She must connect. She must express.

Her time on Naath has done wonders in that regard, given her an abundance of opportunity for trial and error. But this island is a hideaway haven and her peace cannot last eternally. She must return to the world. That is when temptation will return, when old habits will try to resurface, when she will be truly tested.

As she confides this in Theon, he questions, “Why don’t you stay? You’re the Dragon Queen. You can do as you like. Who could stop you? If this place is where happiness comes easiest, choose to stay.” As if it were that simple.

“This is not my home.”

She’d said the same of Meereen and meant it. But neither was Westeros. She’d discovered that devastating truth in another lifetime, too late to save herself. But that life is gone and she won’t forget again.

No conquering. Only liberating. That was her mistake. When she turned west, she lost sight of which was which.

Perhaps home is not a place. Perhaps it is not this land or that land or a keep or a throne. Perhaps home is people. Missandei and Grey Worm. Ser Jorah. The freedmen of formerly Slaver’s Bay. The Dothraki hordes she will reform, their subjugated women she will empower, and the men that suffer in their own ways under such a bloodthirsty existence, trampled under a warrior’s aggression. The poor in Volantis. The sacrificed. Perhaps home is all the people she will leave helped in her wake, the ones she was born with such ungodly power for. Perhaps she just never gets _home_.

Perhaps she wasn’t born to be a woman, but merely to serve a purpose.

_I don’t want that._

_I want more._

_Can’t I have more?_

Perhaps her home is Jon Sno—

No.

No.

That is another grave mistake. Never build your home in just one person. Build your home in as many people as you can. A thousand.

_Just not that one._

As she prepares to return to Meereen, she spends as much of her days with Missandei and Grey Worm as she can, even though she’d resolved to keep her distance and not impose on the two while they’re so new at exploring their love. Now she imposes. Quite shamelessly. She dines with them during meals, she summons them to her shanty after their duties, drinking and talking around firelight.

Grey Worm is puzzled and discomforted at first by the intimacy of her familiarity. To Missandei is nothing new, but to him… They hadn’t grown so close, bonded past the bounds of queen and commander, before they lost Missandei, lost themselves, lost their hope. It was those dark days at the end of another lifetime that bridged the distance of decorum. Stripped them raw. When she’d wandered Dragonstone in hollow despair and sent away everyone but him.

In those dark days, he was the only one that could still reach her. He rarely said a word, but he was always there. He would stand by her side as she sat staring for hours into the fire. He would make her eat. He would be the shadow in the moonlight when she woke up screaming in her bed, the only sound in the cavernous keep, cold and black. Sometimes, he would only stand at the end of it, guarding over her from her demons. Sometimes, when she would wake tearing at herself in frenzy, still caught in the grips of nightmares, he would be forced to come into bed with her, to force her wrists down before she hurt herself. He pinned her once, bearing down through her thrashing, but when they discovered that would only worsen her frenzy, he learned to wrap his arms around her and hug her tight, trapping her hands to her sides. The pressure of the hold was the only thing that could calm her.

Towards the end, there was a night he had to drag her out of the stormy sea. She’d fought him, cursed him, tried to cast him out. Banished him from her island. He did not turn away from her. He did not let go.

It was the only time in any lifetime he disobeyed her command.

Her _Torgo Nudho_ was the only one that refused to leave her to her madness, her disgrace, even after she led his Missandei to death.

But this Grey Worm knows nothing of that tormented illusion, thankfully, so her sudden kinship takes him some acclimating to.

Honestly, she might crawl into bed with them like a pile of pups if she thought they wouldn’t only tolerate her because she’s their Breaker of Chains. As much pride as she’s forced herself to cast aside, it hasn’t absolutely abandoned her.

By the time she is loading the ironborn back to their ships, readying to set sail, the Unsullied have settled in nicely, their treat with the Naathi holds strong, and only two outlanders have fallen ill with the butterfly fever. It is a horrific illness, but the butterflies and their poison are not so great a threat when the Naathi elders have divulged some of their secrets, enlightened them on how to spot the creatures and ward them off and where their nests tend to grow. With each wing as big as a man’s hand, it is fairly easy to avoid those revered messengers of their Lord of Harmony.

There had been a few conflicts cropped up due to some ironborn thievery, but those instances were diffused rather simply, and overall…

This voyage south has been a boon. In a hundred different ways.

And now comes the moment she has dreaded since before they first set out from the Bay of Dragons. For she had already decided then, despite fooling herself otherwise. So she stands on the dock with her friends, her most faithful Unsullied commander and her most beloved sister, and she blocks their path.

Grey Worm had chosen a promising centurion in Marselen to take command of the Unsullied contingent stationed on Naath once he returned to Meereen with their queen. He hadn’t known there would be no need of that.

“You will stay. I need my ambassador to Naath _on_ Naath. And my best Unsullied to protect her.” Then, “If I have need of you, I will recall you to my side,” she lies.

Grey Worm resists. “This one’s duty is not fulfilled until this one’s queen’s enemies are all dead.”

“My enemies will never be all dead. Your duty is here now.”

“This one belongs by Daenerys _Jelmazmo_.”

“ _Torgo Nudho_ ,” she sighs. “I freed you so you could choose your own paths.”

“And we’ve chosen,” Missandei argues. “We’ve chosen to stay with you.”

Dany shakes her head at them, refusing to give in. Not to them nor to her own pathetic selfishness. “I don’t need you with me. I don’t need you to kill my enemies. What I need is for you to choose yourselves. Choose each other. Choose happiness. Safety.”

Missandei pleads, “How can we be safe when you go to the viper’s nest?”

“I am still your queen. I’ve given my command.” Then she softens. “This is hardly forever. The trade route is opened. There will be ships sailing between us often. You may return if you choose, once your duties here wane. And I just may have Drogon make the flight for the next harvest festival. In the meantime, just appreciate being home again, Missandei. And you, my Unsullied, take care of her.”

“Now and always,” Grey Worm vows in Valyrian.

Saying goodbye, leaving behind her most loyal supporters, the only two in the world that never betrayed her, never failed her… Her family… It is harder than she could ever have imagined. But it is the right thing. It is what they deserve.

Her smile hurts, but she hides it well.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are bits and pieces of Dany/Yara, Dany/Daario, Dany/Oberyn/Ellaria in this chapter and the next one. I didn't add tags because I didn't want to mislead, since those relationships aren't what this story is about. Beyond the Jonerys heart, more importantly this is about Dany's recovery process. For further clarification, Dany's interactions with Yara and Daario are hardly more than a few paragraphs each in the entire story. And her dynamic with Oberyn/Ellaria is used as a mirror contrast to Jonerys.

**I HEAR THE BELLS**  
**[heralding a kingmaker]**

**+**

_**“A dragon is no slave to wolves…”** _

The choice is between ice or ash.

That is no choice at all.

There is an unnatural compulsion within her, a compulsion that is not her own. It does not originate from herself. It is a thing like a slave collar wrapped around the back of her brain, striving to compel her. To command her.

_Come. Come._

_Look west, look North, but never turn south._

_Forget the Iron Throne. Forget the Seven Kingdoms. Leave the lions._

_Come. Come._

_Bring your dragons. Bring your armies._

_Save us. Sacrifice yourselves._

She refuses to bow under that compulsion. Refused it even before she understood what it was, what was happening, and all that it was demanding of her. She refused, because her instincts knew. She refused, because a dragon knows.

Even with Naath left behind, part of her still wants to turn away. Run. Ignore the battles on the horizon, rather than sail straight for them. Will she shy away from power altogether, now that she has learned her lessons and seen her fate, or will she echo her past life mistakes by thrusting full throttle into the Great Game once more? She is stubborn, it is true. She will not bow, it is true. But what of her choice? She doesn’t have to give up. She just has to decide for herself what she will stand for.

That is her choice to make. No one can tell her what her battles must be. No one can compel her.

It is the raven that tries. Not a raven, not a blackbird, but _the_ raven. Three-Eyed. She remembers him now. The brother Bran. She feels his talons peeling precisely through her mind, felt it that first dawn of her awakening. She was never meant to remember all that she has, she suspects. She was only meant to obey a command. An imperative placed in her mind by those intrusive talons.

He is a fool, that Stark boy. All those Starks are fools. They never did have any comprehension of who she is.

A dragon does not obey a raven.

Neither does a woman.

**+**

_**“A sea of rebirth…”** _

The return voyage seems longer and drearier than sailing southward had been. She finds herself listless. Depressed. Hardly eating, sleeping more than she should, at a loss for what to do with herself. Truly alone now, those only two she had trusted implicitly gone from her. It was the right thing and she comforts herself by imagining their days on the beach, their nights in their bed, kissed by moonlight and saltwater breeze. Though that is not quite a hollow comfort, it is a double edged sword, cutting as much as it consoles. She mustn’t look back, but the sea ahead stretches endlessly on.

Theon is a silent presence at her side most days, favoring her uninspiring company between his ship duties.

In the evenings, Yara tries cheering her up. “You know what we sailors do when we’re sad and lonely? We drink. Trust me, My Queen. Makes everything better.” She sits down beside her, pours mead at her, plies her with sweet wines.

Dany discovers that she is half right. Drinking loosens her limbs, dulls her senses, distances her from the sharpest corners of her memories. Sometimes, it makes her sadness sweeter. Sometimes, it makes her mood senselessly lighter. She’s never let herself drink enough to affect her, never trusted her surroundings enough to lose her vigilance. But here on the Greyjoy flagship with her loyal Unsullied close by, their world contained, no longer vast, she is less afraid of sudden treason or disaster.

Yara shows up at her door in the night when she is worn and weary and pining once again for something she can never have, someone that does not exist, so she warns the pirate queen, “I am not suited for entertaining.”

“Then allow me to console my queen,” she counters suggestively, leant against Dany’s doorway with intriguing confidence. There’s the typical lighthearted lechery and teasing in her crooked grin, but a certain softness to her eyes tonight that revives Dany’s relentless yearning. A softness that insinuates understanding. A softness that she suddenly doesn’t want to laugh off or disregard, but rather try to connect to.

The first time she’d tried kissing her, back on Naath, Dany had turned her chin just the slightest, her meaning unmistakable. Yara had taken it gracefully, quipping gently, “Don’t know what you’re missing,” without jeopardizing the camaraderie they’ve found between them that she cares for.

Dany had smiled. Murmured graciously, “Doubtless.”

That is what she finds herself seeking more than anything since her awakening. Not thrones or armies or allies or even homes, but _connection_.

So she steps aside and opens the door, tentative, undecided, giving Yara the chance to convince her that this will make her feel better. As she does, a golden memory so blackened begins to battle its way to the surface, to take her over, to drag her back into the hell of her last life… Then the woman brushes her thumb across Dany’s jawline, moving slowly and with great care, cradling her face, tempting Dany back to the present, and that other lifetime falls away.

Wherever it lingers, it lacks the power to consume her anymore.

**+**

**_“A lamb under dragons…”_ **

Ornela is quite a change from Missandei. Hotheaded where Missandei had been forever a placid river, a cool touch, introspective and observant, measured and wise. Above all, gentle. Whereas Ornela is coarse and lurching. It takes adjusting to and it makes her sister’s absence all the more glaring, all the more hurtful.

Her Lhazareen handmaid is a former khaleesi, recently freed from rotting in Vaes Dothrak when she burned their temple and rose from its ashes as their Stallion Who Mounts the World. She’s a spitfire, bitter and quick to lash, her spirit beaten down and repressed from her time as a khaleesi, but that fire never extinguished, only smothered, and now is stoked strong again.

She is braiding her hair, tugging painfully at the silver strands, and Dany ignores it for as long as she can before her patience frays. She catches her wrist, gives her a sharp look, but keeps her voice soft as she says, “If you would rather not be here, you’re free to leave. Missandei was by my side because she chose to be. And now she is home where she belongs. You may go home as well, Ornela.”

Harsh and accusing, her dark eyes hostile, the handmaid snaps, “I have no home. It was burnt to ash.”

Dany ices over. “I will not apologize for burning Vaes Dothrak. We were prisoners in that temple. Slaves. Why should you waste away the rest of your life simply because your husband is dead?”

“I wasn’t talking of the temple.”

At the flicker of easing hostility, Dany realizes her misunderstanding and takes a steadying breath, schooling her touchy mood. Two women both this temperamental will not last long together. She slides pointedly to the side, encouraging Ornela to join her on the bench, hair left half tangled. She waits, studying her pretty features, waits for that perpetual scowl to soften, her guard lowering just a notch.

Eventually, Ornela explains, “When my khal stole me for himself, his khalasar slaughtered my family and burned my village. There’s nothing to go home to. I know no one in Lhazar. And now that I’ve been khaleesi, they would not welcome me.”

“You could go anywhere. You are free to choose. It doesn’t have to be Lhazar. Even if you prefer Meereen, you need not serve me this way if it’s not to your taste.”

“Missandei of Naath asked me to take care of you. I intend to.” She has been acting resentful for months, yet she insists on this.

Dany doesn’t know what to do with her. Or perhaps the real issue is that Dany doesn’t know what to do without Missandei at her side.

**+**

_**“Vipers and lions…”** _

Returning to Meereen, Dany finds Dornish royalty awaiting her. Prince Oberyn of House Martell and his paramour Ellaria Sand. Two daughters, Nymeria and Tyene. The Red Viper of Sunspear and his Sand Snakes.

“This is a surprise.”

“Is it so surprising that the Martells should be interested in the very last Targaryen?” the prince counters glibly, running his dark eyes down the regal presentation of her with clear appreciation. “Especially when she makes herself known to the world with such remarkable feats. It’s only natural I’d want to see this legend of a woman for myself. The stories inspire quite a bit of skepticism, you understand.”

“And you expect a warm welcome in my city. Have you come for the sake of your own proclivities or in your brother’s name?”

“Must I choose one or the other?” he drawls, head canting just so, his smile designed to sway her to his favorability.

“Yes.”

She is steel against his charisma. Flattery and flirting are nothing of substance. Where she had been amused by Yara’s use of it, he comes before her from a very different circumstance. She’s disinclined to allow another Westerosi rat into her confidence, one more opportunity to undermine her.

“Your brother rules Dorne from his knees for a chain of usurpers. He lies in bed with lions, the same lions responsible for the atrocities committed against his very own sister and her children. My niece and nephew.” She speaks quickly, sharply, but remains steady and cold. Even as she watches his charm fall away, taken aback, darkening the farther she goes. “If I were in such a position, I would not rest until every Lannister involved or condoned or benefited from such a heinous act had burned alive before I could ever stomach bowing down for them. That kind of man would receive a very different welcome here than one wise enough to not defend his family’s choices to me.”

“Your Grace!” Tyrion exclaims, stunned.

She cuts through him, “Let the prince speak for himself, Lord Tyrion.”

Her eyes never stray from him, from that dynamic expression taking him now, more honesty to it than there had been in the playful praise. He is reevaluating her, as if he’d presumed and now realizes he’d been wrong. He is peering intently at her, not in the casual measuring way he’d been before, but with a new keen metric, as if his expectations have been suddenly risen. He doesn’t look offended or aggrieved, not angry or dismissive, but he seems pleased. Surprised, certainly, but immensely pleased by her vitriol.

It is most unnerving.

From his first appreciative glance of her, the admiration had been superficial. Now it presses on her skin with more weight behind it.

“You speak of burning every last Lannister while one sits so esteemed in your counsel?” he counters, and she gets the impression he is testing her still. Experimenting with her. Pursuing a newly bloomed theory of her.

She doesn’t mind. “I don’t believe I did say _every last_.”

“A thin distinction.”

“Yes, I suppose Lord Tyrion has benefited from his family’s sins. And not condemned them very loudly.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d say a crossbow bolt through my own father was adequate condemnation,” her advisor argues.

The prince’s grin returns. “Adequate enough.”

“In any case,” Dany redirects, “I’ve yet to hear your answer, Prince Oberyn.”

“My answer… Hmm. Well, you’ve spoken plainly enough, Your Grace, so I suppose I’ll return the favor and forgo the usual game of pretense and convolution.”

“Do,” she deadpans, brow cocking.

That’s when the Red Viper of Dorne takes his first step up the imposing stairs of her pyramid dais. The Unsullied posted along the edges of the chamber tap their spears to the floor in unison but she waves them off. He ascends with an unhurried swagger, providing emphasis to his words, eyes still piercing unnervingly into her. “As you say, if I had been in such a position, I would not bow. But I have never been suited to ruling, and my brother has all Dornish to concern himself with, not simply our family. As a people, we are not equipped to take on six kingdoms and the throne, pit army against army for the slaughter, in my sister’s name.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve come for support in a coup,” she tonelessly jokes, “I’ve already got a Greyjoy family squabble to contend with.”

“I’m not interested in crowns. On my brother’s behalf, I would plead for Dornish independence in the event of a Targaryen restoration, but that is not why I have come. From what I’ve seen in my time here, Dorne would have no trouble flourishing under a Dragon Queen. No, all I desire is justice.”

“Justice, you say?” She’s lured to her feet now that he has come to a halt at the midway landing, looking up at her. “Then you’ve come to the right place. But you’ll have to be more specific before you’ll earn any of my promises.”

“Some years ago, the last time I encountered your little lion in fact, I gave up my chance to avenge a woman I love more than my life. I gave up that chance for another woman I love desperately, because she asked me to never leave her alone in this cruel world. And because of a raven.”

“Raven?” Dany echoes, drawn down one step, then another, cold again.

“Yes, little Silver.”

“I am not your little anything,” she warns, fury flashing under a coat of deadly ice. As he immediately lifts his hands in genial appeasement, that slick smile burrowing under her skin, she is torn between distrust and delight. “Explain.”

“Well, it was the most peculiar thing. A dream, you see. Now typically, I’m not the senseless sort of man to be swayed by whimsy in his sleep, but in this instance…”

“I know all about heeding dreams when the course calls for it, Prince Oberyn. If I did not, I would never have birthed my dragons. Tell me.”

“A raven warned me off from my hubris, that my skull would end crushed under a mountain.” He chuckles. “Hardly a difficult message to decipher.”

“I see.” Her guard slams up again, but her face remains impassive. The raven. The damn raven. She’s sick of that thing. And that it has brought this Dornish prince to her door makes her suspicious of the man, however charming.

Yet another spared by the raven’s meddling. Dany had been wondering who else’s fate the raven might’ve interfered with. To be honest, she was expecting wolves, dreading wolves, not vipers.

Because of the raven’s warning, he won a trial by combat as Tyrion’s champion and killed the Mountain, the monster first on his list. The Viper survived, but he did not achieve his aims. The Mountain raped and slaughtered his sister and her children, but it was on Lannister orders. The Lannisters are the ones he wants to destroy. He sacrificed the moment, because the raven promised him that he would have another chance with patience.

Now he has come east, come to Dany, looking for help in burning it all down.

Vengeance unites their causes. And she certainly intends for Cersei Lannister’s death at the least. But he is asking her for what Tyrion asks, what the Greyjoys ask, what they all expect of her. Something she doesn’t know that she can give them.

She wonders why the raven chose him to save. A prince of Dorne. Dany, she is the linchpin of the eventful end, so she is an obvious choice. But Prince Oberyn? He’d been dead before she ever came west.

She hadn’t remembered, hadn’t recognized Ellaria’s face in the entryway. She hadn’t remembered just how important this man had almost been to her cause. It was his death Ellaria and the Sand Snakes murdered the princes for, his death that brought them to Dany, united in the thirst for Cersei’s blood. If they hadn’t been lost so early on, thanks to Tyrion’s undermining, they could’ve been her strongest allies in the end.

Why preserve his life? To isolate her from potential support? It seems unnecessary, what with how swiftly they were eliminated in the prior lifetime. In order to keep Dorne intact? A strong Dorne would greatly influence the coming strife. Is it that simple?

Just how many minds has the raven influenced?

Does Jon—

No.

No.

“If you’ve come on your own, you’ve no authority to pledge Dorne’s support in my campaign to retake the Seven Kingdoms. What exactly can you offer me?” she challenges.

And he returns with, “Perhaps I’m undecided,” in a husky voice pitched low, his eyes hooding as they watch her descend. It’s a kind of voice that brushes across her skin like a warm enticing touch, shivering through her. “Perhaps I’d offer a creation such as Her Grace just about anything she required.”

She finds herself frozen on the last step before the landing, raised above him but brought inappropriately close, having unwisely ventured into his space. No, not ventured. Drawn. She was drawn. She hadn’t even noticed she was moving until she arrived here. It may alarm her, once her head has cleared, once she escapes that distracting stare.

“Our families have a long prosperous history together, don’t they?”

“Until Elia Martell.”

“Until Elia,” he agrees, the name lilted and thick on his tongue, tone soft in a different way now, a shadow of distant sadness passing quick before it’s gone again.

She almost regrets her initial harshness. She almost regrets it so vehemently that she’s tempted to promise him deliverance right here and now. So many promises on the tip of her tongue, eager to fall off. Promises for his justice, for her own, alliances and oaths and resolutions to avenge their dead and the wrongs done against them all. His Elia, her Missandei.

Except…

Except…

Missandei is not beheaded in the dirt of King’s Landing, trampled under her liberator queen’s vanity and greed. Missandei is happy and whole in Naath where no lion may reach her. Where no one will ever ruin her.

And sailing west to destroy Cersei Lannister is what made Daenerys Targaryen into the biggest monster of them all.

She understands the cost now.

She must resist the siren song of Westeros, of home, of that throne. Most powerful of all, the siren song of vengeance.

Dany denies him ultimately, after a little more back and forth. She offers she’ll treat with Dornish delegates to such endeavors and she’ll host him personally without contention, but she is not ready to look west yet. If ever… Though she keeps this last part to herself.

Prince Oberyn just grins at her, head atilt, gaze gleaming. “Then I shall have to stay until I’ve convinced you.”

**+**

_**“A sensation of satisfaction…”** _

That night is the first time she summons Daario Naharis into her chambers since her awakening. She’s out on the veranda, looking over the starry night sky and the desert landscape stretched vast beneath it. Prince Oberyn is on her mind, the enticement of his voice as it got her to combat him, the caress of his eyes as he left her restless and vaguely dissatisfied. Her body is still tingling from the strange nothing that happened on those long receiving steps. She won’t be able to sleep tonight if she does not exchange that nothing with something.

At his wary approach, she rotates, leans back against the sandstone half wall, awaiting him. As he gets close, she sets her wine on the ledge and catches the sway of her silk skirt, bunching excess fabric in her fingers, easing it slowly upwards, exposing her thighs to the cool night air. She crooks a knee, legs falling wide, hips canted lazily, and he sinks to his knees before her with zero discontent. Worships her readily.

They had left their last encounter so many months ago with tension and a new awkwardness. But in this, they know each other well, and so reunite effortlessly.

With his mouth on her, Dany’s head drops back, lips parted, eyes shut, fingers clenched on the ledge. She thinks of Daario’s comfortable embrace. She thinks of Yara’s stimulating sexuality and all those new experiences on the Summer Sea. She thinks of Prince Oberyn and the heat that flared in her blood as his dark molten eyes raked over her. She thinks of his long fingers and the bristle of that beard when Daario’s own scrapes at her sensitive skin, leaving light burns in his wake. She thinks of the prince’s medallion, hung on a chain against his chest, how it had teased her, how she had almost reached out and twisted that chain in her fingers, tugged him forward. A stray thought, but a diverting one, that insane inexplicable impulse.

She thinks of her lovers, imagined or otherwise, while she looses her taut self deep in the sensations of her body winding tight then snapping hard into an unraveling.

She casts the haunting wolf shadow from her mind.

He’ll never torment her again.

**+**

_**“Krakens asunder…”** _

Crucifying the masters when she first conquered Meereen was whispered as the first signs of her cruel madness. The way the noble Westeros knight looked at her, the way Tyrion reminisces of it, the way the Essosi elite scorn her for it. _She is mad. Mad like her father. Tyrant._ But she never wavered, because she knew they were wrong. The slaves knew it too. The mothers of the children those masters had crucified to turn her away, they knew it better than any.

“There’s nothing wrong with giving monsters a taste of their own medicine,” she had argued. “I will never apologize for that.”

No, they are wrong about her. About all of this. She must remember herself. She must not let them sway her this time. She will not doubt herself. Will not live by their rules, their morals, for those are slanted to favor the oppressive. Where she went wrong was King’s Landing. Turning her fire on the innocent. Before that… Before that, she was right and true and bringing justice to injustice. She knows she was.

When an ironborn fleet is sighted sailing into her bay, she makes arrangements, ensuring they’re prepared for their visitor before he arrives. As she awaits in the greeting chamber of the Great Pyramid, dozens of Unsullied lining the walls and several on the stair landing below her, Prince Oberyn appears over her shoulder.

“I hear you’re hosting a kraken this morning. Shouldn’t your Westerosi advisor be present for this particular audience?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“If I were to advise you on this matter—”

“If you were to advise,” she coolly interjects, “it would be because I assigned you as my advisor.”

“Indeed,” he drawls, but his smile is infectious.

Dany’s sigh is tinged with exasperated fondness. She rolls her eyes up, gives a little negligent wave of her fingers to allow him on.

“I would say that the fleet he can offer you fails to outweigh the treacherous task you would take on, trusting a man of that nature.”

“And what nature would that be?”

“That of a boarish kinslayer?” he quips. “Just for instance.”

“Indeed,” she mimics, eyes narrowing at him with a sly grin.

At the front entrance, Dothraki bloodriders lead in the sprawling Iron Islands party and she schools her expression back to ice. For a moment, she considers having Ornela escort the prince back the way he came, having her keep him occupied for this. But then she thinks, _No… Let him stay. Let the Viper see what I am. Let this charming prince see with his own eyes how I handle my enemies._

Euron Greyjoy swaggers in at the head of his roughneck men, thinking he’ll bed a queen and wield her power. Why wouldn’t he think her an easy conquest? How do the stories go? That she opens her legs and gains another army? He’s in for a rude shock. But she twists her lips into a gracious smile, biting back the seething rage flared up at his face, at the memory of Rhaegal, bolt after bolt puncturing through her child, his agonized screams, the impact of the water. And here this repugnant man stands, grinning up at her, eyes gleaming, his excitement and optimism like ash in her mouth.

Her buried rage is so palpable, Drogon’s roar echoes in the silence from the sky beyond the pyramid. In the corner of her eye, she notices Prince Oberyn’s winged brow at that, but she ignores his intrigue.

“Saw those beautiful beasts on our way here. Have to commend you, Dragon Queen. You must be quite the woman … to tame such things.” It’s so similar to something the prince at her shoulder has said before, but it feels completely opposite. Where there had been warmth and teasing but admiration in his demeanor, this pirate exudes nothing of the kind that had endeared her. Lascivious, condescending, ominous. His gaze skims her, not quite able to mask his leer, and her skin crawls. Her stomach revolts against the restraint of her chained hatred.

“Are they tame?” she counters, making everyone in the chamber nervous.

“Tame enough to be sicced on your enemies, aye? That’s tame enough for me.”

“Lord Greyjoy,” she begins.

“King,” he cuts her off. “That’s King.”

“Mm. I wouldn’t say so.”

“Now, now, Dragon Queen, no need for insults. And after I’ve come all this way, gone to all this effort for you.”

“For me?”

Euron spreads his arms wide in theatrics. “I heard the Dragon Queen needed ships, so I built her ships. Sailed them all the way here from Pyke, just for her pleasure.” When he jauntily hops the first few steps up her dais, the Unsullied posted at the landing cross their spears, inspiring him to backtrack. “After all that, you’re telling me we can’t even be friends?”

“I have enough friends.”

“Aye, and what of husbands? I hear you could use one of those. Who better than a Westerosi king with the finest fleet of the west, ready and eager to carry you and yours back where you belong?”

“You call yourself king—”

“I am king. King of the hardest sons of bitches in Westeros. Men you could use.” He tosses a look to his ironborn. “Ain’t that right, boys?”

“Aye!” they jeer.

Dany continues as if uninterrupted, “—after murdering your brother and stealing the Salt Throne from his rightful successors.”

“Allegedly!” he argues affably, laughing. “And successors? Who’d that be? A cockless Stark pet and a woman? Ironborn will never follow a woman.” He crooks a conspiratorial grin and adds, “Not one without dragons anyway.”

Patience run out, she rises from her bench, takes a step or so downward, saying, “I always have need of ships, and your fleet is admittedly impressive, but you’re mistaken, _King_.” The word flips off her tongue with glimmering malice. “Your ships, I will take. You? I have no use for.”

Before she even finishes, the Unsullied on the wall have surged into phalanx, swarming the ironborn, spears at their throats before they can draw their cruder weapons. One breaks from the others, knocking her helmet off to reveal herself just as Euron whirls to meet her dagger driven deep into his stomach. She drives it in and twists it with a dark smile. “Hello, Uncle.”

“You ugly bitch,” he snarls, starts to shove at her, but Theon is there at his back, snatching him by the arms, pinning him for his sister.

Yara gives her dagger another wrench, sawing it upwards through his sternum, making him grunt and gargle and thrash in Theon’s grasp as she guts him open.

At the landing, Dany watches the life empty out of him with a bloodthirsty smile, viciousness infusing her like the warmth of the sun, rejuvenating. _It’s good to be queen._ He will never pull her children from the sky. He will never be Cersei’s brutal shield. He will never hang butchered Sand Snakes from his bow like gruesome props.

She pauses at that thought, half turns to look up at the inscrutable Dornish prince for a contemplative moment. For the first time, she wishes someone could share with her this dark knowledge of an impossible reality. She wishes he understood what she just did for him. She wishes he could share this vengeful vindication with her. He just watched a man die, a man that might butcher his daughters in a future that will never come to pass now. He just received the satisfaction of a justice even greater than Elia’s could be and he’s no idea of it.

If she told him, he would think her mad. Deranged just like her father.

Releasing the wistfulness, she turns stoically to the remaining ironborn. Lifts her chin, commands, “Kneel to your queen. Or die.” When they drop down, facing her, Dany says, “Not me.”

Which startles the entire chamber. She meets first Theon’s slack expression then Yara’s and quirks a fine eyebrow. _Did you doubt my word?_ her look challenges. But the Greyjoys collect themselves quickly. Theon turns toward his sister, pointedly dropping to one knee, head bowed to her. The rest of the ironborn Euron brought with him do the same, some more begrudging about it than others. There will doubtless be struggles in the transition, perhaps another insurgence, but that is Yara’s task now. Dany has done her part. If Yara can’t hold her Salt Throne now that Euron is gone, then she’s not the right person to rule it.

The Unsullied stand down and Dany ascends. She bypasses her bench and moves through the corridors, sensing Ornela and Prince Oberyn trailing her. Once they reach her royal chambers, she and her handmaid go about stripping her from her Meereenese gown and strapping her instead into her riding leathers.

A testament to just how much she’s come to indulge the Dornishman since he’s arrived, she allows him to linger in the antechamber, to drink his fill of her across the room if he so chooses. She can’t tell if she’s disappointed or pleased that his eyes don’t bother to peruse her when given the chance.

This was not a way to inspire faith in her as the queen he chooses, she’s well aware, this macabre tableau the prince just witnessed. She’s unashamed of her methods, but it doesn’t leave admirable impressions when one doesn’t have all the facts. Which he confirms as soon as Ornela leaves the room, noting in a deceptively idle tone, “That was somewhat dishonorable, sweet Silver, that trick you pulled.”

“A man who kills his own brother simply to seize his power and hunts niece and nephew down like dogs has earned no honor to be shown to him,” she counters coldly, striding past Prince Oberyn without a glance.

It’s hard to tell whether he’s truly rebuking her or just playing more of his games. She’s come quickly to learn that his true thoughts are often hidden beneath complex layers of innate playfulness and baiting for assessments. Either way, she has work to do, and she will not be swayed by some privileged prince. Not even one she’s so foolishly attracted to.

That afternoon, Dany takes her dragons out to the bay to encourage the rest of Euron’s loyalists to bow to their new Greyjoy queen. She need only send one ship and its broken burning pieces to the bottom of the sea before they understand what they’re dealing with.

**+**

_**“The devoted old bear…”** _

A year or so since her awakening, Ser Jorah returns from Oldtown cured of his cursed grey plague with concerning news from Westeros.

The second she sees him, she rushes past her guard and throws herself at him in a way she never had before. Never would have. Girlish and vulnerable, raw and open, no queen’s reserve. Embracing him, caressing his face, tears shining.

Why is the sight of him so heartrending? When she looks into his soulful eyes, she feels some of what Missandei inspires these days. It takes deep searching moments until she understands the wave she’s hit with. Until she remembers. That dark night, fire and blood and undying death all around, Jorah in her arms, sobbing over his corpse. Struck by the premonition of grief, she pulls him back into her embrace once more, holds him tighter, longer, ignoring his surprise and confusion and the usual worry of giving him false hope that always kept her rigidly distanced.

“My steadfast protector,” she murmurs into his neck. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

“I swore I would return to you, My Queen.”

**+**

_**“A wolf’s mate…”** _

_“What do you pray for?”_

_“Home.”_

Flowers in the window, lemons in the grass, golden sun bathing everything. She feels the kiss of its warmth on her skin, so much of it exposed by her sheer summer dress, her silver hair loose, unbraided, her feet bare. She sits under a lemon tree, her back to the bark, a little girl with silver tresses sleeping in her lap. She’s not sure how she got here, but she’s absolutely certain that it doesn’t matter. She strokes her fingers over the child’s back and couldn’t care less what might’ve brought her to this beautiful place.

Rhaegal and Drogon swoop low overhead, arcing through the blue sky as they wrestle together, wings flapping, tails lashing at each other. Her sweet Viserion lands behind her and she feels the small jolt of the earth under her at his impact. They’ve all gotten so enormous. But he claims a spot on the other side of the tree and still tries to curl up like a hatchling against her. One hand on the girl’s head, she reaches her other over her shoulder and scratches at his scales until he purrs.

It is perfect here. This place. This world. It is perfect.

She never wants to leave.

“Mama!” someone cries. “Mama, I’ve finished my chores!”

When a boy with black curls comes running across the yard, the girl in her lap scrubs at her eyes and clambers up, groggy but excited. He grabs his baby sister’s hand and they run clumsily together up the hill, off where the dragons have disappeared to. With a playful screech, Viserion lifts himself into the air to chase them.

“Wait!” Dany calls after them, a sudden desperation pushing her off the ground. Panic and longing and inexplicable loss. “Wait, please, don’t go!”

No one listens. All her children are gone. What’s left of them is just the echo of their laughter and screams in the distance.

Before she can move to follow, a strong arm wraps around her stomach, pulls her against a hard chest, trapping her. “Let them go,” he murmurs huskily. “Let them have their fun. They’ll be safe.” The bristle of a beard tickles the curve of her throat when his mouth brushes along her skin, kissing her softly until his teeth clamp to an edge and nips her. Dany yelps, elbowing her way free, spinning to face her husband.

“Jon,” she breathes out. Heavy, wrought. The sight of him slams into her with the force of a horse, trampled like a visceral blow. “You can’t be here.”

He looks at her funny. “Where else would I be?” And when she tries to backpedal, he lunges forward, snatching her up around the waist and swinging her off her feet, held up high, crushed to his chest. She tries to protest but he catches her mouth and kisses any resistance out of her, any sense of why she’d been startled to see him, why she’d been so devastated only a moment ago. He licks and nips at her lips, talking into the kiss as he walks her across the yard. “Ghost will look after them. The rest of the day is ours.”

“Ours?” she echoes dazedly, fingers digging into his shoulders, legs winding around his torso to cinch herself to him before she consciously makes the decision that she wants to stay. Wants to let those half formed realities slip away before they can ruin this. Wants to be his wife.

Jon’s laugh is a throaty thing, vibrating in his chest. “Aye, ours, my love. You’re so strange sometimes. What’s gotten into you?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t matter now.”

Once he’s got her over the threshold, he kicks the red door shut and presses her into the nearest solid wall with a tortured groan. Impatience unfurling, urgency grips them, tugging and shoving at clothes, devouring each other. Trying to climb inside each other and never come out.

Fabric rucked out of the way, tangled and confining, he thrusts inside her like he’ll die if he waits another heartbeat, and she cries out. Cries and gasps and shudders at the sudden intrusion, dripping around him, clenching on him, her limbs locked on him and clinging closer. He draws out, snaps his hips, slamming against her, and she cries again. Grits her teeth, bucking on him, heels digging into his thighs. She lifts a hand, clutches the crown of his head, fisting in his messy curls, yanking at him until he hisses in pain, craned, throat left exposed. She ducks, bites into his apple, earning an animal growl in his chest, a harsher slam of his hips, whole body crushing her to the wall, jostling her with every heave. Her teeth graze up to the sharp edge of his jaw.

Jon ruts into her until it hurts. Until she shatters in awful ecstasy.

“Doesn’t matter now,” she murmurs deliriously into his sweaty skin, limbs going limp around him as he carries her into their room, every move scraping her raw. She’s quivering and panting. She’s shaking her head over and over, kissing at him as the words pour out of her, “Doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters anymore.”

She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She doesn’t understand what it means. She just knows that she has to stay. She can’t bear to leave.

She has to be here with him when the children return to them.

Dropped onto the bed together, they roll around the unkempt linens with mindless and aching desire. He pins her beneath him, even when she fights. He distracts her from her want for dominance by delving into her mouth, sucking at her tongue, nipping. One hand winding her silver tresses on his palm to jerk at her, he drags the other down from where it had clasped her throat to catch the hem of her dress. He rucks it roughly under the heavy swell of her breasts, freeing them to grind her nipples against his chest before he bends and catches one between his teeth.

Frustration and powerlessness whimpers and snarls out of her and Dany can’t take more teasing. More taut sensation. She jams her knee into his ribcage, flips them over, shoving at him when he resists, pinning him beneath her now, riding him raw.

When she shatters again, spasming and melting on top of him, he cups the nape of her neck and drags her down into another obscene kiss. He uses her unraveling to earn her submission, rolling her under him again. Stoking her up again.

“Don’t worry,” he rasps.

“Hmm?”

“Don’t worry, beloved. I’ve got you.”

Intense and breathless and fucking slowly but deeply. He licks at her and she arches. She bites him, claws down his back, and her body just keeps pulling him in. Whispering in his ear as he groans. Thrashing, straining, striving, climaxing. Drowning in each other a thousand times.

They are warring and making love and warring again. They are tearing each other asunder and building each other anew. For every wound they rip open, they lick and suck and kiss and soothe and consume. A beautiful breathtaking savagery.

_“I’ve not come to conquer the North. I’ve come to save it.”_

She’s lying on her stomach, naked, arms above her head, stretched out, sprawled boneless. He’s left her alone, but she’s unafraid. He’s gone for sustenance and she knows he’ll return. He’ll always return to her. She’s certain of it. And so he does. Strips down and lays over her, sliding sensually against her, waking her from her half dozing with his teeth on her nape and his hips pushing against her backside.

When she twists her neck and kisses him, her fingers dig into the back of his neck, tugging at his curls. He pushes deep inside.

“Are you nearly ready to come home, beloved?”

“Aren’t I already home?” she asks, bewildered.

“Dany,” he sighs, suddenly inexplicably disappointed in her. He pulls out and pushes in again as she squirms beneath him. “You can’t hide forever.”

“I’m not hiding,” she denies. There is a flare of fury under the confusion that makes her knock him off her, makes her scrabble out from under the pin of his body. Furious. She is furious with him at the accusation.

She’s not hiding. Can’t he understand? Doesn’t he know? She’s not hiding. She just doesn’t _owe_ them anything.

Snatching her torn dress from the floor, she tugs it over her head and glares at him, but Jon just sits against the headboard, wrists rested on his bent knees, blanket strewn carelessly across him. He doesn’t try to yank her back to bed. He just watches her from across the cold distance.

“You know what you must do.”

Horror dawns inside her, dampening the fire in her blood, icing through her soul. Those words… Jon says them, but another voice overlays his own, an unwelcome voice. It’s the compulsion in her head again, the raven trying to break down her resistance. She casts him out, casts Jon with him, refusing to let the groundswell spill in.

Beyond the red door, she lurches desperately back into the sunlight, gasping for air, shaking, sobbing. She has no idea why she’s reacting so strongly. Why she’s so distraught, so abruptly devastated. And _angry_. So very angry.

At the lemon tree, she collapses to her knees, clutching at its bark, struggling to calm herself, to master the maelstrom.

When the wolf comes for her, she’s not as averse to his presence as she would be his human counterpart. She sinks her fingers in his white fur and buries her face in the pelt until she quietly finishes crying out her old revived heartbreak.

More broken dreams.

That’s what Jon Snow has always done, isn’t it? Given her all the dreams she never allowed herself, given her the hope of them, brought her so close to them, then ripped them away, left them ash at her feet.

Presented her with paradise. Left her with a wasteland.

For some reason, she thinks of a raven, lost among the roots of ancient trees, plucking a thousand small threads of fate.

This feels wrong.

Over the hill, she hears her children laughing and singing.

It’s all wrong.

Those children will never exist. And this man… This man was only ever merely a wish, a delusion she convinced herself of. He never existed, not like this, not as the man she thought he was, wanted him to be, the man that loved her truly.

Jon Snow betrayed her. The real Jon Snow never loved her. Not like this one. He betrayed her. Failed to defend her to his ungrateful Northerners, failed to protect her from his manipulative family. He betrayed her confidences and turned her fickle advisors against her. He failed to stand at her side when she needed him most. Left her alone in the world when she stood at the precipice of monstrosity. He allowed her enemies to rally against her in his name. He came to kill her. _He came to kill her._ It doesn’t matter that she took the action out of his hands. He meant to.

_Who could truly love a dragon?_

_No one._

With that, she shatters the treacherous illusion like a blow to cracked glass. Breaks free of Bran’s imprisoning mind maze. Retaliation for disobeying the imperative he tried to instill in her? Doesn’t matter now. His intentions, his plans, she doesn’t care. This new attempt to enslave her enrages Daenerys. Wakes the dragon.

“Hiding from what you are is no better than abusing your power,” that eerie voice on the wind warns her. “Those people will still die. Not by your hand this time, but by theirs. Not fire, but ice.”

“Then let ice be kinder.”

“You know what you must do.”

 _“Stay out of my head!”_ she thunders. And the world sparks aflame.

**+**

_**“A river of time…”** _

_“I want to go home.”_

Eventually, she realizes, _I have no home._

The Dragon Queen of Meereen becomes a collector of outcasts and wanderers. Jorah, Tyrion, Yara, Theon, Vipers and Sand Snakes. And all that’s just her Westerosi. The Essosi are even vaster acquisitions.

Her easterners encourage her along her path of liberation. Her western advisors push her westward, urging her to begin her invasion without delay now that she has the ships she needs to carry her armies across the Narrow Sea. They push, and they push, and she hesitates.

What to do about the Greyjoy siblings that came to her door? Euron dead isn’t good enough, because they’re still stuck under a Lannister thumb. Theon wants to sail north to serve Winterfell. Yara wants war, independence for the ironborn, to dethrone Queen Cersei. Instead, she has bought time, convinced them to become just another nomadic khas in her eclectic khalasar, deserting the Iron Islands for now. Until…

That’s the trouble, isn’t it? Until… While she’s been collecting, she’s misled them all, allowed them to believe something she’s come to realize she’s no intention of. Ever.

Deciding no longer paralyzes her. Deciding is easy after the raven’s last trap. She’s known from the start what she would do, she’s known, and now she’s finally capable of accepting the truth.

Confiding in Jorah is nowhere near as arduous as she braced for. And as soon as the words are released into the air, she can breathe easier than she has in years. Since she awakened. He has such unimaginable faith in her that he hardly has a flicker of skepticism. When she questions his unfaltering belief, he simply explains, “The last time I was fool enough to be doubting your impossibilities was that dawn of Khal Drogo’s pyre.”

“I’ve been given a gift. A glimpse of a fate I may now avoid. I won’t let it be my curse. I will use it to do better. I can do the most good right here. I can change the world from right where I am.”

“And what of Westeros?”

Cold and cruel, her heart hardened against it, Dany looks out over the desert and declares, “Leave them to the ice.”


	6. Chapter 6

**I HEAR THE BELLS**  
**[heralding a kingmaker]**

**+**

_**“Red Vipers of Dorne and the Mother of Dragons…”** _

Ellaria said to Oberyn, _“Don’t leave me alone in this world.”_ Just before his trial by combat with the Mountain on Tyrion’s behalf in King’s Landing. In another lifetime, he would have lost, and she would have been consumed by her vengeance for him as he had been for his sister, and it would have led to a horrible fate for herself and all his daughters. And the cycle would have remained unbroken.

Dany watches the couple closely, Prince Oberyn and Ellaria Sand, constantly touching each other, caressing even as they converse with others, draping over each other whenever they’re in the same vicinity. Teasing and suggesting and bantering and just generally always appreciating the other. They are partners, that in the truest sense, something she has never witnessed, only imagined. She watches them with an ache in her chest and a tightening in her stomach. Regardless of her initial attraction to the man, there is no jealousy or possessiveness when she looks at them. But there is… Because of what they represent, there is… There is… Desire and longing and despair. Envy and the aversion to it at once.

There is something so captivating about the Red Viper and his Sand love.

They flirt with her shamelessly, trying to seduce her, trying to entice her into their strange games of delight. They speak of Dorne and what it is like there, the land, the people, the culture, the history. They speak of their family. They speak of hers. Stories of the Mad King, stories of the honorable Rhaegar Targaryen.

When that word flips off Oberyn’s tongue, it is mocking. Honorable. What kind of honor is it to abandon a wife and children? He has no love for his dead good brother, it is obvious, but he is tricky with his phrasing, not wanting to upset her too bluntly.

He doesn’t realize that it is not the legacy of a brother she never knew that upsets her. It is all the secrets she shouldn’t hold about the past, and all the awful fates they were supposed to lead to for the future, before the raven interfered. It is those thoughts of Lyanna Stark and her Aegon Targaryen. Rhaegar’s last surviving child. The true heir to the Iron Throne. The King in the North.

She contemplates revealing this grave revelation to the prince. He is so intimately entwined in the affair, nearly as much as even Dany herself. She wonders what he would do with such information. Tell the world, return west, forsake his bid for the Dragon Queen’s favor and seek the _honorable_ Jon Snow for the position he’s intent on her fulfilling? All she would have to do is open her mouth and there would be no turning back, no changing her mind, her course permanently set.

Open the path to the crown for Jon Snow and she would never have to look west or think about that ugly chair of such Valyrian steel again.

Of course, precisely what is the weight of a birthright when she’s the one that walks through fire unburnt and wakes dragons out of stone?

“The gods may choose our battles, but we get to choose our weapons, sweet Silver Queen,” the prince tells her, still so cleverly talking around the matter, urging her toward the resolve he’d like her to have without ever actually urging it.

Despite these habits, Dany finds herself confiding in the Dornishman more often than any other in the proceeding months. Certainly more than her Lannister advisor. Every time she reminds herself to remain distanced and distrustful of him, he wins her over in some new way. Melts her.

“I am less worried for my weapons than I am for the way I choose to wield them. The possibility that I may lose sight of just who my enemies are.”

“That’s a fair worry. In my experience, it’s incidental so long as you never forget who you are. Remembering yourself is more important than fixating on your enemies. How else do you think I’ve thrived all these years despite my first purpose in this life remaining as ever to one day achieve justice for Elia?”

“You’re a patient man,” she admires, a teasing edge to her smile.

“Only when I must be.”

As they walk the paved cliffs overlooking her city, her humor fades as she muses, “I am a monster that protects people from all the other monsters. That is my destiny.”

He catches her elbow, just a touch of his fingertips pulling her around to him, unconcerned with the Unsullied who tap their spears in warning. He is studying her intently again. He always seems to be studying her. “A beautiful monster then,” he murmurs decidedly, trails one careful fingertip down the curve of her cheek, “and I do not refer to this pretty face.”

Rather than rebuke him for the liberties, she allows them. Secretly savors them. Unlike most intentionally suave men she has known, this Dornish prince does not leave the taste of bitter patronizing or belittlement on her tongue. He is named for a snake, but that is the opposite of how he impresses upon her. However she may try to ward herself from such naive temptations as to believe the best of a western prince, she always ends up back where she started, melting under his attentions, like her dragons basking in the relaxing warmth of the sun.

Perhaps she has grown too desperate for confidants since losing Missandei and Grey Worm, since realizing that to rely on Tyrion Lannister would be ruinous. Perhaps it has left her too vulnerable. Too needy.

Prince Oberyn seems to understand something of her soul, because what he asks her next is, “Must the road to vengeance always be a tragic one?”

“I hope not,” she says, intending to leave it at that. Yet she is confessing before she can silence herself, “I have seen my fate and it is an unkind one. I fear taking that road will ruin me and everything I love. Still, I don’t see how I can turn from it, not completely. Try to do better, yes. But forsake it? I doubt I have that in me.”

“ _Unbowed, unbent, unbroken_ ,” he recites, eyes lingering once more on her face after they’d turned together to face the river. “You would do well with House Martell, My Queen. Don’t count yourself out so early in your rise.”

“Am I that? Your queen?” she challenges lightly. “I seem to recall Dorne’s fealty sworn to the Iron Throne and yours to Dorne.”

“My fealty will always lie with my family,” he amends, pointedly not conceding nor really renouncing the assertion.

“ _The lone wolf dies. The pack survives._ ”

While she is preoccupied, the Martells spend their days roaming her city or sitting in on her council meetings, generally just causing trouble, though usually to Dany’s benefit. They are restless creatures, the Dornish, easily bored, ever in search of diversion, exploration, new adventures.

Ellaria makes herself at home in the Harpy Houses, seducing and sowing chaos among the remnants of resistance to the Stormborn reign.

Nymeria pushes the initiative of weapons training with the queen, something that never occurred to the warrior men around her, insistent that they were how they could keep their queen safe and insulated and offended by the suggestion of a foreign bastard girl having the audacity. She is small and light like the queen, she defends, and her weapons are tailored for that, nothing so cumbersome as a broadsword or anything that requires such overhead strength as an arakh. Dany tentatively accepts, but only after being riled by the prince’s playful goading. And then she gets to enjoy startling the smug Sand Snake, because she may be unskilled, but she is stronger than she looks. She must be … to ride a dragon.

Tyene takes to playing at Dany’s handmaid beside Ornela, because it amuses her. Dany allows her, despite it being an obvious spy tactic, because it amuses her too. And because it provides her an easy method of testing their intentions, feeding Tyene bait, calculatedly permitting her to overhear certain matters, waiting to see the ripple effects of what she and her Viper father choose to do with their gained intelligence.

As for Oberyn, his favored pastime becomes pestering Dany, all but giddy over her dragons. He needles and charms and wagers with the queen for a chance to ride with her. She entertains herself finding new ways to deny him.

Dany herself becomes a brasher beacon than she had been in her past life, when she had abandoned her Essosi for the west. A beacon of hope, fire in the night. Routing slavery, the official and the unlawful, out of the Near East. As many masters and traders and noble class that stand in her way, there are overwhelming seas of lower castes that seek to aid her, to call for her, to carry forward even beyond her. The Unburnt becomes a rally cry, an inciting symbol myriad uprising, emboldening the downtrodden.

The first sign of this that really captures their attention is the Pentos Purge. Fifteen hundred smallfolk rioting in the streets, burning towers, lighting giant pyres to summon the dragons, pleading with her to depose the corrupt magisters that control their prince. Her advisors warn her against interfering, predict that there would be an impossible flood of supplicants and strife if she were to answer these radical calls. She answers anyway.

Then comes their theocratic neighbor Norvos, lowborn blaspheming their gods and priests, calling for the Unburnt Mother to cut down their lesser gods and false prophets. She cleanses them of their slave trade, but leaves the restructuring of their governing bodies up to the people that called out for her to come north. She’ll play divine benefactor to the zealots if that’s what it takes to see justice done, but she has no interest in being their godly caretaker, running things as their priests had.

Tired of their varied feudal systems, peasants rally together and revolt all over the east as victory after victory pours in for the Dragon’s Crusade, wanting their Mother of Dragons to get involved and kill their negligent or oppressive overlords.

Occasionally, it’s entirely uncalled for and they’ve mischaracterized her mission. Most often, it’s justified.

Sending support to the Myrish Triarchy when Great Masters she’s forced on the run try to push in on Myr. Using the repatriated gold from slaveholders to aid impoverished freedmen and their reemerging cultures in her wake. Forging generous trade pacts with the weakened Lorath when pledges its fealty. Defending against scheming Qohor and its city of sorcery.

The people, the commoners, the silent majorities, they call out for her to come and liberate them. They call her the Bright Harbinger, burning those that would chain them, bringing in a better future, changing the order of the world. Khaleesi, Queen, _Mhysa_ , the Unburnt, something divine. It’s everything she’d so vainly dreamed and it’s just as fulfilling as she’d expected. The people love her. They have faith in her.

If they knew what she’d done, in another lifetime, what she could’ve been if she’d taken a different turn on the crossroads… If they knew what she really was, they would run in terror.

Across the tumultuous Near East, the most aggressive defendants of slavery are Tyroshi elite, who set to align and plot with fellow resistors such as Qohor and Qarth, while Braavos remains infuriatingly neutral in the conflicts. In reaction to Dany sanctioning their city until abolition, a powerful slave rebellions sparks and the Archon of Tyrosh is assassinated in her name by his own subjects. A power struggle follows, clashing to fill his seat and crush the rebellion.

With shadow backers, a proxy war unfolds between Meereen and Tyrosh. The Golden Company is hired to march south and dethrone her. Ten thousand fighters, fifty bows, and hardly twenty war elephants, and ten scorpions to fell her dragons from the sky. They mean to pincer her in, the Golden Company from the north and a navy force from Qarth in the bay.

“When will my enemies learn?” she wonders, marveling at their foolishness as the reports stream in.

Then again, if they learned, they would heed her mythos and her triumphs would be harder to achieve without constantly being underestimated and dismissed.

“They’re either grossly misinformed or unforgivably arrogant.”

“Why are we even concerning ourselves with this? Send your Dothraki screamers into the valley and slaughter the Company. Do to the Qarth navy what you did to Volantis when it sieged. There is no dilemma here.”

“Ten thousand men may be nothing under the swell of a hundred thousand Dothraki, but the scorpions are enough deterrent to my dragons, and the war elephants will make a difference in ground battle.”

“We could send an envoy to intercept their path. Try to sway them to our side. The Company don’t have any stake in the slave trade. They fight for coin, not belief.”

“They won’t break a contract.”

“If we make sure their choice is break or die, they will,” Dany declares, standing purposefully over her war table, where she’s been studying the terrain closely, following the path her scouts have mapped. She extends her arm, taps a fingertip to a sketching, traces it along the route to Meereen. She tells her council, “They’re rounding the Painted Mountains to take us by surprise from the north while we blockade the Demon Road and prepare for a western attack. If I burn out this pass, that means they’ll have to cross this valley here. No one is better at traversing their own Sea than the Dothraki. They can arrange themselves before the Company gets anywhere close.”

“What are you thinking?”

She looks up, meets Jorah’s inquisitive stare, says with a secret smile, “I’m thinking Vaes Dothrak."

And so she orders her bloodriders out, digging trenches and utilizing natural rivers and ravines, filling streams of oil. While they work, she flies east to intercept the Qartheen ships on their course to her bay, sends them sinking into the sea under a rain of fire. When the time comes, when the Company crosses, she sets out with her dragons, keeping above the clouds, wary of the scorpions, and alights the marked streams to encircle the encroaching army in fire, penning them into a kill box.

Rivers of fire. A valley of slaughter.

There’s no need to decimate an entire fighting force if unnecessary. She doesn’t burn them all alive in her sprung trap as she did with the Great Khals in Vaes Dothrak. She disarms them, overwhelms them, forces them to surrender. She takes command of the Golden Company for herself, as she did the Unsullied, as she did the Second Sons, as she did the Dothraki.

_“I pity the lords of Westeros. They have no idea what’s coming for them.”_

When she returns to her city victorious, descending Drogon’s wing, it’s Prince Oberyn that awaits her, infused with the same thrilling heat in his blood that she feels, that familiar battle high. “I was never fool enough to dismiss the stories outright, but it is a different thing entirely to witness such spectacle firsthand. You’ve certainly changed the game, Silver Dragon.”

“Scare you off yet?” she teases. “Or are you still brave enough to beg a ride?”

“I’m no beggar, but I do wait patiently. You’ll wear down soon enough.”

She hates to sober the mood, but Dany notes the way he casts a dismissive look up at the veranda Tyrion is watching them from with a troubled expression, angling his body to her in a way that veers them away, and it reminds her of curiosities she’s held her tongue on for long enough. Prompted by the double meaning in his quip, she begins with, “Let me ask you something. You say you’re set on justice for your sister, vengeance against the Lannisters, but Tywin Lannister is dead and you’ve killed the Mountain yourself. So why still set yourself against the next generation?”

“Because the Kingslayer and his golden hand are no cleaner of Elia’s blood than Tywin’s had been. Because Cersei Lannister is a worse kind than her father ever was and to leave Dorne under her whims is to invite disaster.”

“You disapprove of a Lannister sitting on my council, despite that he’s killed more Lannisters than either of us.”

“It’s not my place to disapprove of anything you choose, my sweet Silver. You’ve more than proven you know what you’re doing. Yet for my own? Well, I would never trust a man that could strangle his own lover in her bed.”

She’s startled. Halts to turn and stare hard at him.

“Ah. You did not know then, what he’s done, what chased him from Westeros.”

“I was under the impression he went in exile for killing his father.”

“Yes, his father. That’s all they cared for, of course. The murder of his lover was inconsequential to those that might spread the word. In Dorne, we do things differently. We don’t even regard our whores in their brothels so disposably, but especially not those we’ve chosen. He might explain how she testified against him in his trial, and he found her in his father’s bed afterward, but these things mean little to me when we speak of the measure of such a man. Whatever her sins, coerced or otherwise, does not give her lover leave to wrench the breath from her life.”

Dany has frozen, limbs locked up, chest tight, eyes burning. She can’t breathe. She feels dampness on her cheek and wants to scrub it away, wants to turn so he won’t see her weakness, her worst vulnerability, because it leaves her too raw. But she can’t make her body obey her. She is trapped by the chains of a past that never became.

It’s the prince’s turn to startle, blinking, head canting, reassessing. He didn’t expect this reaction from her. Why would he? It’s senseless. “You’re trembling,” he murmurs, closing the space between them, his warm hands stroking softly up her arms to linger at the curve of her shoulders. One thumb caresses her bared collarbone. It’s the first time he’s touched her with none of his innate sensuality, only a harmless thing, as if soothing a spooked horse. “I didn’t realize the little Lannister was so important to you.”

“He’s not,” she dismisses, hating the rasped sound of her voice. _He’s not important._ Which is both truth and lie. Lie, because there was a time in another life that he had been one of the most important people in her heart. A time where she had loved him and he had betrayed her. Truth, because she has guarded her heart from him in this real world, warned by the visions in the flame, by her dragon dreams, by the raven. She has kept him at a distance, treated him coldly, refused to bring him further into her trust than any other mildly useful advisor. _He’s not._ “I just thought I knew the make of the man. I don’t like being so drastically mistaken.”

“None of us do,” he quips, offers her a distracting smile.

Her body is not reacting to his words of Tyrion. Her body is reacting to memory that will never be real to anyone but Dany. _Whatever her sins does not give her lover leave to wrench the breath from her life._

“You’re allowed to be wounded, My Queen,” Jorah had assured her, venturing so tentatively when she confided her darkest secrets to him. When she confessed of the blade in her chest, of the man she loved, of the way she feels in its aftermath and the way she wonders whether she even deserves the right to feel that way.

“Am I?” she’d asked him. “After what I’d done, what choice did he have?”

“A man has every choice. And if that is what needed to be done… No, there is nothing you could tell me that would convince me of that. But if it was, it didn’t need to be the man you love that struck the blow.”

But whose arms would she have wanted to die in but Jon Snow’s?

Except…

She didn’t die in Jon Snow’s arms, did she? It was Grey Worm that caught her. It was her faithful Unsullied commander that cradled her into death.

_I am alive._

_I razed no city._

_I love no man._

Dany composes herself, gathering the marble mask over her face once more, reclaiming control over her weak body’s reactions. She steps smoothly from under the prince’s gentling hands and questions, “Just how brave are you really, Red Viper?”

“What do you propose?”

“I allowed at least a quarter of the Qarth fleet to reverse course when they raised their white flags. I’d like to scout the sky, just to ensure they’re truly returning home. I find myself in the mood for company.”

His dark eyes alight with eager fervor, but he says, “The last thing I’d want to do is discourage you, but you’ve just landed. Won’t you rest first?”

Dany offers him a hard smile. “I’m not tired.”

“Very well then.”

She backtracks the way she came, pausing only to throw a challenging look over her shoulder when he hesitates. “Not so brave then, prince?”

“There’s nothing in the world that could dissuade me from riding a dragon when the invitation presents itself,” he assures excitedly, catching up to her, his bravado back. But she can tell he wants to interrogate her on her recent distress, wants to second guess the wisdom of taking Drogon right back out again when she’s obviously been upset by something she won’t disclose. She can also tell he’s clever enough to bite his tongue on this specific matter.

Which is clever indeed, because if he’d interrogated her, she might’ve had Drogon perform a few barrel rolls to see how well he holds on.

Once the skies clear her head and her children soothe her soul, she is still repulsed by this latest revelation. Further disillusioned. It changes how she views Tyrion, even more drastically than the ephemeral recollections of his undone betrayals. Nothing anyone in this world is capable of could come close to outdoing the scale of her own undone sins, but the more intimate transgressions are a different shape.

_“Two terrible children of terrible fathers.”_

_“I’m terrible?”_

Something she soon learns about Prince Oberyn Martell… He is perpetually sensual in all that he does. Amorous to some degree in every movement, every glance, every word, even when he has no interest in his companion. Though he does seem to have interest in her, not just as a weapon to wield but as a woman.

When she’d felt bold enough to confront his innuendo and command he bare his intention plainly, he had only purred, “Must I remind you, I’ve never ridden a dragon before,” making her shiver.

Only now he has.

Late one summer evening, the prince and his paramour end up comfortably claiming space in her private chambers. After enjoying the revelry in the lower pyramid of freedmen and visitors, they come to find why she is hiding away and not among her people in their celebrations. They ply her with wines and imported fruits and cajole her into better spirits with their incessant hedonism. No matter how grim the world around them, these Martells and their beloved bastards refuse to do anything but look to the bright side of life. They refuse to be diverted from savoring whatever pleasure and joy there is to be had while they breathe.

She hopes Missandei and Grey Worm have that on Naath. Unending pleasure, relentless joy. Since she left them behind, she spends hours at time daydreaming of them, imagining Naath.

When the beautiful Ellaria asks after her thoughts, she finds herself spilling forth stories of the beach and the bonfires and the moonlight and the waterfalls and the jungle and the mountains and the peaceful melodious Naathi natives. She paints loving portraits of her Missandei and the woman’s great love, her rise from Astapor slave to where she has lifted herself now. She confesses how desperately she misses them both, how selfish and greedy she is that she struggles against recalling them to her side, dragging them from their paradise back to fire and blood.

Beautiful indeed.

While the wine and loneliness loosens her tongue, Ellaria rounds the furnishings to drape herself along the chaise Dany is settled primly upon. She crooks a knee over Dany’s lap, calf sliding between Dany’s as her sheer Dornish dress falls open, more an array of slippery scarves than any secure covering. She props an elbow on the top edge by Dany’s ear and catches loose silver waves between her fingers, playing with the queen’s hair while they speak. She does it on purpose, Dany knows, not so inebriated to recognize when the dangerous temptress’s wiles have turned focus, while the prince looks on in amusement.

Still, knowing her motives doesn’t make the lonely queen immune, so full of longing since her awakening, so insatiably hungry for something that cannot exist. She studies the woman’s features, dark and smoky Dornish beauty, cutting cheekbones, sharp nose, lush mouth, mesmerizing eyes. Her engaging warmth, her tactile friendliness, her clever mind and savage temperament, too sophisticated with it to be called barbaric, but ruthlessly vicious just the same. Her fire is less the barrage of a dragon like Dany’s, more the quick painful strike of a snake.

Ellaria Sand is not simply beautiful. She is ravishing.

Dany understands why Prince Oberyn is so devoted to her, no matter how many lovers divert his attention so fleetingly. And her own apparently. They work well together, compliment each other, unconventional but a powerful love nevertheless. Though it is ironic that the prince is coined Red Viper, because from what she remembers, what she has observed, Ellaria is the deadliest of the Dornish.

Reminding herself that Oberyn’s paramour is a treacherous as they come, she knows to always keep a watchful eye on her, regardless of how much of her trust Oberyn himself earns. In another lifetime, in pursuit of revenge for her great love, Ellaria Sand murdered her own ruler, Oberyn’s own brother, and his heir, so that she may seize power and wield it against the Lannisters that destroyed her happiness. Dany certainly sympathizes with that, and she has no love lost for the prince that bent the knee to the usurpers and even now refuses to take a stand against their shared enemy without the Mother of Dragons to stand between them. But it does speak to Ellaria’s character, as it speaks to Dany’s own, borrowing her tactics to depose the men in her way. It means she cannot judge her for such actions, while also ensuring that she cannot ever put her trust in her. They are too similar for that.

She also can’t allow herself to forget that Ellaria Sand was willing to poison an innocent little girl in order to wound Cersei Lannister. In another lifetime, a darker world. It is a painful reminder of what she herself is capable of, should she lose sight of who she is, should she lose herself to such pursuits again.

She would like to think that this Ellaria, this woman that has not lost her heart and therefore her morals, is more compassionate than that. She would like to think that this version of Ellaria is a fresh start, as Dany needs to believe about herself. Innocent of actions she has not yet taken, washed clean of sins she will never allow herself to commit. They are similar, and that terrifies her, but it also brings hope.

Her eyelashes hooding, Dany forgets what she’d been saying when the woman leans in and tastes the sour wine off her lips. Sucks the sweet fruit flavor from her tongue. She lets herself welcome the kiss, lets Ellaria deepen it, leaning over her, exploring her, igniting that singeing heat under her skin. But when she skims a hand down Dany’s torso, taking hold of one inner thigh, she catches the wandering wrist in a gently restraining grip before it can venture any further.

It’s not like with Yara Greyjoy. She’s not comfortable losing herself here. This isn’t the Summer Sea. These waters are too treacherous.

Oberyn appears at their side, clasping Ellaria’s hand, lifting it smoothly out of Dany’s reach. He kisses her knuckles and hooks his other arm around her waist, pulling his paramour off the chaise, breaking their kiss. Ellaria murmurs protest, but two fingers tap her jaw, turn her face into his kiss instead, and she grabs onto his neck to pursue it. As they stumble druggedly backward towards the extravagant royal bed, daring the audacity to collapse together in its welcoming plushness, Dany finds her gaze caught on their display, torn between amusement and regret.

Regret to be abandoned on her lonely side of the chamber, despite her reluctance to participate. Amusement from their shameless liberties, which she should rightly be offended by.

If anyone else dared half such presumption as Prince Oberyn and his Sand love perpetually do, they’d never survive their stay in Meereen.

What is it about them that inspire such indulgence from Daenerys Stormborn?

While they worship each other, they don’t forget her. In between kisses and caresses, gasps and moans, they look to her. Tease her, entice her. When she demurs, he inquires, “Is it your Second Sons commander that restrains you?” Then so magnanimously offers, “Summon him. Your bed is certainly big enough.”

If she wasn’t blushing before, Dany most definitely does now. A nervous laugh escapes her before she schools herself, rolls her eyes up with an exasperated head shake, trying to become the imperiously cool queen again, even while the wicked Dornish lovers attempt to make her squirm. Arousal and embarrassment infuse her heavy limbs while the ache in her chest extends lower, grows warmer, softer, torturous of a different kind. Molten.

“If we’re extending invitations, I’d vote for the bloodthirsty pirate queen instead,” his paramour argues. “She could be fun.”

“Two queens in bed at once, my love, you bite off more than you can chew.”

“Says the man with grandeur delusions of taming a Dragon Mother.”

“Her behemoth children will be tamed before she ever is,” he jests with a playfully punishing bite to Ellaria’s edged shoulder that morphs her husky laugh into an affected grunt and makes her hips buck against him. Dany flushes far warmer from the admiration in his voice than she had from their seductive taunts. Not the superficial flattery to her beauty or sex appeal, but that of substance for what she has made of herself.

_Why could you not love me, Jon Snow?_

The stray thought strikes at her like a bolt of lightning, catching her off guard, killing her good mood in a flash. Every time she begins to relax, begins to find reassurance in the fact that she’s healed her heart and let go of that past life, another devastating pang will come out of nowhere and shatter her complacency. Every time.

“Come, fierce Silver, come join us.”

“Perhaps I’d rather remain where I am,” she replies, lifting more wine to her lips with a cool look that masks the flushing of her body, desire tightening tauter down low, heart stuttering nervously. More impressively, it masks the impact of grief’s blow. She is proud that her voice stays steady, stays lighthearted, no sign of her despair or desolation or the secret sting of old rejection.

_Who could ever truly love a dragon?_

_No one._

She sets those thoughts aside, casts the plaguing turmoil out. She runs her eyes savoringly over the lovely couple in her bed. Lets herself become entranced.

Ellaria smirks knowingly. “Yes, my love, let her remain where she is. I think our dragon prefers to watch.” Like silk snakes, her long black curls spill around them, interrupting Dany’s view of all that soft dark skin, thick curves and hard planes and slender lengths and muscled limbs entwining.

She is Daenerys Stormborn, the last true Targaryen. She is the Mother of Dragons, the Silver Dragon, the Unburnt Mother, Queen of Meereen, Protector of Essos, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. She is surrounded by people who love her. Thousands of them. They love her as they would a benevolent goddess, something divine come down to save them from their mortal monsters.

Even these two, however untrustworthy, she is willing to believe are fond of her in some genuine sense. She is willing to believe it is not all just another game.

She is loved. People love her.

_As a symbol, not a woman._

No.

No.

_A symbol. A weapon. A dragon._

Yes, that is true. Those that love her don’t know her. Even those that do know her, even those closest…

Missandei loves her for more than her dragons and her armies. But Missandei does not know what she is capable of. Missandei has not seen that monstrous side of her that Westeros unleashed. If she did, if she had any idea what lay beneath the surface of her beloved Mhysa, she would turn from her. Just as they all did in the end.

Jorah knows. Jorah knows her. Jorah knows what she once became. Jorah loves the woman Daenerys.

_Ser Jorah loves the imaginary pretty princess sold to the savage khal._

If he had lived, she must wonder if he would have stayed. Or would he have betrayed her with Varys and Tyrion and Jon Snow?

In the end, they all turned from her. In the end, the only one that had never forsaken her was her _Torgo Nudho_. He is the only one in the world that looked into the darkness and loved her despite it. But would he have? If his Missandei had not been taken from him, if he had anything else to hold onto, if he hadn’t felt he must serve her in Missandei’s memory, would he have abandoned her as well?

_Stop_ , she commands herself. _No more._ She is sick of this. These plaguing thoughts, always coming back to her, no matter how viciously she banishes them. Will she ever escape the darkness in her mind? Her heart, her soul. Will she ever grow past this haunting torment? Grow, change, accept, be free of it all?

Tonight, she will not torment herself.

Tonight, she will be Ellaria Sand, in love with her lovely Prince Oberyn. Or she will be Oberyn, in love with his fierce Ellaria. She will be both. She will shed Dany’s scarred skin and step into them instead. And she will know what it is like to be free.

Devoted, ever faithful, never abandon, never betray, but always love, and love is always enough. Red Viper, they may call him, but he would never murder his love, no matter how far she fell. His only true duty is to the woman he loves most of all.

They shift so Ellaria is astride him, her back crushed to his chest, his arm banded across her collarbone as she undulates against him, a rhythm that begins slow and provoking before it intensifies, growing sharper and desperate, an erratic frenzy. They are both staring intensely at Dany across the room as they fuck, making a show of it at first. Eventually though, they get wrapped up in each other. Ellaria twists her neck and kisses him, sloppy and wet and deep and all consuming.

As they reach peak together, the rest of the world falls away.

In that moment, nothing but the two of them exists. Not even Daenerys.

**+**

_**“They call me the Kingmaker…”** _

The protector of Essos and her Dragon’s Crusade requires a spymaster most of all. Varys is skillful, but he is never to be trusted. She keeps him close, builds her Essosi network behind his back, assigns watchers to track him and his little birds. Spying on the spymaster. Dragon Eyes, her spies are called. She uses freedmen, bribes merchants, whores in their brothels, Red priests and missionaries. It’s how she knew movements of the Golden Company and Qarth before they ever crossed into her territories. It’s how she knows war is brewing in the west, with or without her presence.

She tests the waters by helping here and there from afar, too scared of herself to wade into those treacherous seas once more. Westeros was her undoing once. She’s afraid…

Highgarden and Sunspear become locations of import to Dany’s foreign policies. She still holds zero intention of sailing west with her Essosi or her dragons, but those certain peoples with more inclination towards Westeros and the heritage that would see them welcomed there… Well, those are utilized when need be.

Dany arranges alliances. The first of which is Yara’s support to Lady Olenna in the Reach as her campaign against Cersei emboldens. Sending the Golden Company to reinforce the Reach and its armies when Cersei declares open hostility and attempts to turn House Tarly against their Queen of Thorns.

Sending Tyrion to Sunspear as her ambassador to Dorne, entrusted to convince Oberyn’s brother to bid for independence and stand with the rest of them against the Lannister Crown. Sending Daario and his Second Sons to reinforce the Dornish armies, as a goodwill gesture, a sign of her commitment to supporting Dorne and its princes should they revoke their loyalties to the usurpers.

Promises of the Dragon Queen to support claim for Dornish sovereignty in the aftermath of dethroning the Lannisters does almost as much to sway Prince Doran into breaking with the Crown as the arrival of the Second Sons. The Reach follows in similar vein. Sowing dissent and spreading chaos from across the Narrow Sea, they say, scorning the last true Targaryen.

Within another year, the Iron Throne is left with only the Westerlands and the Stormlands still tied securely to its reign. Ostensibly, the Vale and the Riverlands remain under its control, but the Reach gains a stronger foothold in the Riverlands every day, and the Vale is loyal only in name, so incestuous with the North, which thrives in open rebellion since the Battle of the Bastards and the crowning of King Jon Snow. Dany and her far flung puppet strings, as some would phrase it, have kept Queen Cersei so busy in the south that she hasn’t had time to worry about looking northward to the roughnecks and their frozen wilderness.

It’s not how she’d intended to unseat the usurpers all these years, but Dany finds she’s able to make significant waves even without crossing west and endangering her children or her people or her soul. She’s compelled kingdoms apart under a Stormborn Coalition, a charter of international law, dividing the Seven Kingdoms out from beneath the poisonous Iron Throne until it’s weaker than it’s ever been before. The Iron Islands, the Reach, the Riverlands, Dorne. Soon all Cersei Lannister will have left to rule is her squalid capital city.

They call her the Kingmaker.

It’s misleading.

She’s made more queens than kings.

**+**

_**“Vipers in my bed, but howls hidden in the thunder…”** _

Dany falls into bed beside the prince and his paramour more easily after that first wary night. Driven by too much wine and an aching heart, preoccupied with a future that will never come to pass, with a man she will never know, never give the chance to break her in this new life. With Daario and Yara both west, she’s left with no lover to summon into her bed when the loneliness gets to be suffocating. She grows closer with Ornela, but she will never be Missandei, never fill that hole in her life that Missandei’s absence carves. So she allows herself the risk of trusting Sand Snakes.

Some nights, she’s receptive to their kisses and caresses. But most often, she just watches. Just lies tangled up with them, enjoying the company, the human touch, the connection. It keeps her from sinking too far into herself. It keeps her from withdrawing from the humans all around her and using her dragons to chase them away. It keeps her from ever forgetting again that she is more woman than dragon.

Though they are extremely sexual creatures, Oberyn and Ellaria, she comes to consider them close friends, confidants, not lovers.

Lounging together one stormy night, she’s staring up at the painted ceiling in a daze while they preoccupy themselves, turned haphazard the wrong way, making a mess of the bed. The sound of the rain has brought the darker impressions of her past life to the surface and made her melancholic. Candlelight flames flickering shadows on the walls, the soft glow combating the sharp flashes of white lightning as it cracks beyond the opened veranda.

It rarely storms like this in the desert of Meereen.

This thunderous rain reminds her of her last night on Dragonstone. That place that was supposed to be her ancestral seat, her birthplace, her home, and instead became her tomb. Long before she helped Jon Snow drive a dagger into her chest, it was her tomb, and her a walking ghost haunting its halls.

“What troubles you, my sweet Silver?” Oberyn murmurs, resting his brow against Ellaria’s collarbone as she strokes long deadly fingers through his hair. “You’ve been inconsolable for hours.”

“Lost in her head,” Ellaria explains. “I know that look. Only a man ever causes that sort of look.”

“Don’t tell me you’re missing your Second Sons commander. I won’t be convinced. The man was clearly lovesick, and his queen was clearly not.”

“No, no,” his paramour dismisses. “This yearning is for someone else. Someone far away and long ago. Someone she’s given up on but can’t forget. Am I right?”

Eyes still fixated on the intricate ceiling mural and its shadows, rubbing absently over her unscarred heart, Dany confesses, “I loved a wild wolf once.”

“Wolves have no place in the desert.”

“He chose not to come with you here?”

“He betrayed me,” she answers vacantly.

“So your dragons burned him in consequence and now you still mourn,” the prince surmises with a droll lilt.

“What sort of betrayal was this?” Ellaria demands.

“Drove a knife in my chest.”

Not really though. That’s how it feels, what it seems to her, but in truth… She did that to herself, because it was coming and she wasn’t about to let a man choose her fate for her. But she could have fought him. She could have executed him. She could have waged another war. Won another war. No one would have been able to ever stop her. If she hadn’t given up…

“So the Mother of Dragons walks through fire and weathers blades in the heart,” Oberyn murmurs, his attention fully on Dany now, his calloused hand stroking slowly up and down her calf before his fingers close tight around her ankle, grounding her in the present, pulling her back to the lovers in her bed.

Ellaria says, “The man you love tried to murder you?”

“I loved a man and he murdered me,” she corrects.

“Then why do you mourn him?” There is scorn in her tone now, as if she thinks less of her for this weakness. “Why miss a love like that?”

“Because…” _Why? Why must I miss him? Why?_ “Because I must.”

The prince catches his paramour by the jaw, forcing her mouth to his so that she stops giving Dany that judgmental look. Against her lips, he murmurs, “If we could make our hearts obey, life would be simple and clean, my darling. And boring.”

“I don’t think he wanted that,” she ventures softly, talking to herself. Finally allowing herself to think of these things. To think of his side. To allow for the sliver of possibility that Jon Snow once loved her in return. That it had been real. “I think things went wrong and we made mistakes and got farther and farther down ill fated paths. And then I made a choice that none of us could ever return from. So he made his choice. The only choice that remained to him.”

“I refuse to believe harming our beautiful monster is ever the right choice.”

“It just wasn’t meant to be,” Dany realizes, another strike of lightning, an ominous crack and roil of thunder. “A dragon was never meant to love a wolf.”

Especially not a wolf with dragon’s blood in his veins.

**+**

_**“It all fell down…”** _

Sailing to White Harbor. She knows they are sailing to White Harbor, but she can’t remember why. _“Together. We sail together.”_ It’s an important voyage. A turning point in more ways than one.

She comes into the room after being called away and she finds him fallen asleep. On his stomach, arm tucked under the pillow. She sips wine, lips wet, and watches him. Loves him. She’s never felt this…

This joy.

It’s an easiness, a peace, an intense quiet gratefulness. Bright glimmering hope that leaves her buoyant in a way she’s never experienced. But then also the terrible fear that someone will take it away from her. Take him away.

She sets down her cup and climbs carefully onto the bed, laying herself out gently on top of him, her weight on him, her knuckles under her chin, her mouth on his back, mapping him, savoring him. All the scars, so many old scars, mangled and rough. He comes awake with a small groggy smile, keeps his eyes closed, voice low and gruffer from sleep. Teasing.

Dany wishes she could hear what he says.

Dany wishes this were a real memory and not some foggy far away _what if_.

**+**

_**“Give me a soft epilogue…”** _

_“She is the queen we chose.”_

“There is one last injustice done to Elia that you deserve to be aware of,” she tells the prince on the eve of his departure, recalled to his brother’s side in Sunspear. Gravity to her demeanor, she summons him into her private chambers and sits him down across from her. “Rhaegar did not kidnap Lyanna Stark. They were in love. They secreted away together. He convinced a maester to annul his marriage to Elia, so that he may marry Lyanna properly.”

Oberyn has darkened at this news. He sits back in his chair with a heavy breath, tightly controlled, anger warring with weary resignation beneath his placid surface. “Properly? There is nothing proper about any of what happened back then.”

“I won’t disagree with you.”

Calmly, he informs her, “I would have killed your brother myself for that decision, even if Elia had lived.”

“I have been told by the western knights around me that my brother Rhaegar was an honorable man. An incomparably good man. But a good man does not abandon his family or set his wife aside for another. And that is the least of his selfishness. Causing such a devastating war to erupt for the sake of loving a girl. Leaving his wife and children to suffer the fate they would. No, I will not defend any of it. I understand,” she assures him, her voice still held very gentle, “but that is not what you must know.”

If the world knows the truth, it will not be her salvation. It will not mean they stop coming to her, stop seeking her support, stop rallying in her name. Even if the whole world prefers a man in her place, there will always be those that come to her door. And there will always be many more that feel the need to eliminate her from contention, just in case she ever dare to change her mind.

She will never be safe. She will never be free.

And yet…

And yet…

When he meets her eyes again, she takes in a shaky breath and steels her wavering resolve, drowning the fear. No turning back now. No undoing this once it is done. “Lyanna Stark was not murdered like Elia. She died in childbirth at the Tower of Joy. The babe survived. He was taken north, raised in Winterfell as Ned Stark’s bastard.”

Comprehension dawning before she even finishes, she’s never seen Oberyn allow himself so stunned. He sits forward fast in his chair, leans toward her. Slowly, heavily, he says, “Jon Snow, King in the North. Rhaegar’s son?”

“His last surviving son.”

_The true heir_ , neither of them need say aloud.

Jon Snow, King in the North, heir to the Iron Throne.

Stark and Targaryen.

Wolf and dragon.

The prince releases a long breath, shaking his head in wonder, peering knowingly past her impassive face into the turmoil of her soul. “My sweet Silver Dragon…” He reaches across the table and clasps her cold fingers. “Why tell me this?”

_Why trust me with this?_

_Why give us all this weapon against you?_

“I want to keep my promises. I want to support you and yours. I want to rip out our enemies by root and stem.” She turns her wrist, squeezes his knuckles in a moment of honest vulnerability, letting him glimpse the neediness she fights to deny. “What I don’t want… I don’t want the Iron Throne. I don’t want the Seven Kingdoms. I don’t want to become that which I seek to defeat.”

“You’d rather a nephew you’ve never known rule?” Disbelief is his countenance. “I know you, Daenerys. You were reborn in the flames to remake the world. You couldn’t possibly prefer to leave all that change up to the whims of a stranger. Not when we all know this is _your_ destiny.”

“Must my destiny be tied to an ancient chair?” she challenges. “It’s an ugly thing, you know. In the end, it’s a meaningless thing.” She’s still clinging to his hand, which might have made her feel weak and at risk in another life, but he hasn’t pulled away, and she only feels strengthened. Connected. “Oberyn, I can change the world from right here. I don’t need a throne. Especially not that one.”

“And your nephew? If he proves cruel, like the others? Or ineffectual, like many? What will you do if he gets in your way?”

“He won’t.”

“You don’t know that. We don’t know him.”

“I know Jon Snow,” she murmurs softly. He tries to protest that, interrogate that, but she rises to her feet and uses their clasped hands to pull him with her, rounding the table between them, tugging their bodies nearer. Her gaze darts down to the medallion on its chain at Oberyn’s neck. She hooks it on one knuckle and urges him into a closemouthed kiss before she lets go and passes him by.

“Dany…” When she turns to look back at him, he asks again, “Why?”

With a sad smile, she answers, “If I go west, it will destroy me.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for captivity, humiliations, and threatening sexual situations, but no rape.

**I HEAR THE BELLS  
[the bells of hell]**

**+**

_**“Strike me down, take me away, this is judgment day…”** _

Daenerys Stormborn, the Silver Mother of Dragons, Unburnt Breaker of Chains, Great Khaleesi, Queen of Meereen, Empress of Essos.

That last one… That’s what they begin to call her as time goes on and the Dragon’s Crusade continues. And that assumed honorific brings forth a host of new troubles.

Her very first conquer, Slaver’s Bay became the Bay of Dragons. Astapor, Yunkai, Meereen, she marched up the bay and they fell one by one under her resolve. Then came Volantis and Vaes Dothrak. Soon, she ruled all of Ghiscar to her south, she guarded Lhazar to her east, and arranged pacts with the Summer Isles beneath Valyria. In a matter of years, all nine of the Free Cities fell in line by treaty negotiations to the Stormborn Coalition.

It becomes a habit of the Silver Dragon. Aligning with friends, conquering enemies. She dethrones tyrants and leaves the trampled masses to establish and elect their own councils and legislature in her wake. Or crown their own kings. So long as no one stands against her, so long as no one asks her for aid, so long as Stormborn Laws are unbroken, they’re left to their own devices. She becomes more legend than ruler, more guardian than queen. She doesn’t want to own the world. She just wants to change the order of it.

The powerful will always do whatever they can to cling to power. For that, she will always have enemies set against her.

She will always be at war.

There is no peace for people like Daenerys Stormborn.

There is no end in sight. Only death. Victory in the meantime.

Across the sea, in the only place she fears, she hears tales that she refuses to look too closely upon.

At some point, the Lannister twins were defeated, executed, and the Iron Throne was destroyed. Queen Yara of the Iron Islands, the Queen of Thorns in the Reach, and the Martell Princes of Dorne retained their reigns with help from Dany’s allocated forces. Lord Robyn of the Vale chose neutrality, refused a call of bannermen from the Crown, aligned with the North. At the end of the Six Kingdom War, what stood settled was five independent provinces and a fractured triumvirate.

King’s Landing rules the Westerlands and Riverlands, but who rules King’s Landing? There were conflicting reports on that, a quiet constant clashing of power grabbers in the fallen capital, vultures fighting over scraps, no definitive answer to be had. All she knows is that it isn’t Jon Snow. All she knows is that he rejected the claim when banners sought to rally in his secret Targaryen name to place him on the Iron Throne and resolidify the schismed Seven Kingdoms. Most likely sparing Westeros from an even bloodier civil war, south versus north. All she knows is that he chose the true North.

Part of her always knew he would. He will always choose them. His family, his home. He will always choose his wolf pack.

It’s why she’d wanted to belong there so badly. Why it hurt so horribly when she discovered herself unwelcome. When his family and his people made it clear that she would never be one of them. Jon Snow would always choose the pack and she would never be part of the pack. A dragon could never be accepted among wolves.

Her and her children were destined to save that iced wasteland, but they were never meant to stay. After they had served their purpose, they were expected to die. Sacrifice themselves for an ungrateful place, not get in the way. But she had dared to demand more and it led to her downfall.

Not in this life.

With the wars of the south ended, all her close ties in the west enjoy peace while the North fends off winter. With no more strife at the borders, the Second Sons return to Meereen, but the Golden Company chooses to remain west.

In another lifetime, Viserion falling to the Night King had vastly accelerated the Long Night, delivering their enemy the ultimate weapon, the exact thing he needed to bring down the Wall that held them at bay. Without Dany and her dragons, the Northmen gain years to prepare. They will still die, in all likelihood, she realizes this, but they are granted time. Perhaps he will convince the south to intervene this time. Despite all she lost in the fight, it hadn’t been Dany or her dragons that destroyed the Night King in the end. She’d bought them time, paid for it in the near extinction of her own people, but it hadn’t been her to deliver that final blow. Perhaps they have a chance.

Regardless, threats from the Far East concern her more than Westeros these days. More prevalent matters, closer enemies, friends in need.

_“I serve my queen because I want to serve my queen. Because I believe in her.”_

Pyres alight again. People from Yi Ti plead for the Silver Dragon’s patronage. No pathetic slave master this time, but a self-coined God-Emperor who insists himself divine. Once upon a time, the Golden Empire was glorious. Now, the ruler of Yi Ti has little power beyond his capital city of Yin. Lo Gai of the Azure Dynasty, who hides away in a palace more sprawling than the Great Pyramid and the Red Keep combined, while slaves prop up his luxury and his people toil in rags and muck, vengeful against their false idol, hopeful for a new era.

Before she decides whether to depose another despot at the behest of his common people, she starts a campaign of information seeking. Months of spy reports and scouting and diplomatic ventures, learning the shifting political landscape of the region. Several factions have summoned her easterly. The lowborn are who set great fires in signal for her. The strongest opposition, however, is led by an austere General Qo. The infighting between these two juggernaut factions has trampled the smallfolk. Instead of finding an ally in her new task with the dissenting general and his junta, she faces a secondary threat to factor into her commitment.

After sending her fleet into the Jade Sea, she flies Drogon high above the clouds to spearhead the invasion. But a storm pushes them low before they’re even halfway along their route. A sudden onslaught of wind and rain slowing their progress, leaving the dragons to struggle at staying on course as it intensifies. Lightning flashing, cracking, sizzling too close to their urgent wings. The barrage soon grows too strong. She’s forced to search for somewhere safe to land and shelter through the storm or else risk the wind ripping her right off Drogon’s back.

Rhaegal and Viserion split off, trio scattering to find the nearest landmass for touchdown.

Crossing over the Jade Gates, it’s not the storm that spikes sudden panic in Dany. She should’ve known something was wrong. Storms like this don’t just happen naturally this near to the Red Waste. She should’ve known. But she didn’t. She didn’t even know it was possible. Not until, out of the darkness, an unholy boom reverberates through the sky.

A long drawn sound, not the thunder, but it shakes the sky like it anyway. Earsplitting, obnoxious, the hoarse pitch of a warning horn. It overpowers the din of the storm, pounding rain and roaring wind and the furious beat of Drogon’s wings. It pierces into her body and rattles her bones. She’s screaming, burying her face against Drogon’s neck, her hands slipping from his spikes to grab at her head, at her agonized ears. It’s so loud, so consuming, she doesn’t realize her son is screaming too, thrashing wildly, his pain so much worse than hers. No, it’s not the storm that sends them spiraling down to the roiling strait below. It’s the magic in their veins.

In the chaos of descent, Dany loses her grip. She’s left in freefall, pitching into the choppy water while Drogon fights the sky, twisting and snarling and screeching. Caught in the force of the riptide, she’s tossed and thrown until she can’t tell which way is up. All she knows is pain. Blinding, mindless. There’s an impact from above, a boom, a wave, the whole sea pressed against her, shoving her one direction, as if the sky has fallen down upon her. Not the sky. Her child. He’s hit the water and the weight of his crash has thrust her away. Knocked her loose of the mad swirl. Left her adrift in a sudden calm.

The last thing Dany sees before sinking into oblivion is the glimmer of the sun’s return in a placid blue sky, no sign of any storm on the horizon. Gone as unnaturally as it arrived.

**+**

_**“Never fall, never crawl…”** _

Ancient magic once altered the timestream. Ancient magic once kissed her fate, created a woman into dragon, fire made flesh. Now magic has betrayed her.

She must have been fished out of the sea, because she wakes on hot rough stone, caked in dust, dried out. She’s lain beneath a scorching sun, in a garden with high walls and a reflecting pool, vines and ferns around her. A small green prison.

How did she…

Fuzzy. Her head is fuzzy. She’s fatigued and bruised and disoriented. At first, it’s just blank. Then she remembers. A horrible horn made her ears bleed. Snatched her and her son out of the sky, felled to the sea, crashed them against the coast. And now…

This place is familiar. In a way that deepens the dread. Unsettles.

At the pillared top of the reflecting pool, there’s extravagantly sculpted marble, some kind of hydra with many heads, arching high and flowering out, providing limbs for snaking vines to hang and drape from, creating a willow effect. She grasps the lip of the pool and hauls herself up to collapse over it at the chest, reaching in and splashing her chapped face with the cool water, gulping some down, dehydrated from sea salt and desert heat.

As she gathers her strength, slumped there, her blurry eyes begin to clear, roving the construct above her. Not a hydra of beasts, but a hydra of men. She makes out their vague faces between the vines. At the base, there’s an engraving. She runs her fingers over the grooves when she discovers it. An epitaph of vaunted honor.

_The Fallen Thirteen, slain by the Dragon Mother._

Familiar…

Familiar…

Lies. Such endless lies of her in this world.

This is Qarth. Felled from the sky above the strait of the Jade Gates, on the coast of Qarth, and now she’s woken in the heart of the mercantile capital at the western edge of the Further East. A tropical oasis tucked behind impenetrable walls, surrounded by a deadly desert. That horn. Qarth, her old enemy, her new. Trap. She flew right into a trap, her and her black son. Ceasefire broken. And magic. Some new magic. They wove new magic and whatever it was snatched her and Drogon in its web.

When she pulls herself to her feet and hammers at the sealed gate, it opens and she’s faced with a dozen armed men. They push her back toward the pool, surrounding her, threatening her. Once she’s regathered her wits, she’ll be humiliated by how it jars her, unsure how to react. It’s just been so long since she’s been cornered by outright enemies. So long since she’s not been insulated by faithful followers that would kill and die before they let anyone even contemplate turning a weapon in her direction. So long since there was no dragon nearby to burn them all.

Daenerys lifts her chin, steadies her nerves.

“Where is my dragon?” she demands, studying the stoic faces of the City Watch soldiers that stay silent. “If he has been harmed, this city will be razed to the dirt from whence it sprung.”

The gate opens again and an obscenely adorned man enters, decadent against the armor of the soldiers. “Don’t bother blowing your hot air, Queen _Mhysa_. You’ve no fire behind it here.” His tone is jovial, almost saccharine, incongruous to their situation. “Nonetheless, we’re thrilled by your company. You’ve truly honored us,” he says, like she has graced them as their lauded royal guest.

“Quite the invitation,” she returns.

And the decadent man laughs warmly. “We do as we must.” He snatches up her blistered hand and holds it delicately between them while she bites back a snarl, unimpressed by his magnanimous mummer’s show. “Please, Queen _Mhysa_ , you may call me the King of Copper.”

He may call himself that, but Qarth has no true kings or queens. Qarth has its Thirteen, an oligarch of rich noblemen that hide a squalor city of suffering servants behind facades of gold and jewels. The last time Dany set foot in their city, the former Thirteen were poisoned and usurped by one of their own. How it ended, Dany locked him in his own empty vault so that he may waste away with his precious imaginary riches. They’ve been thirsting for her downfall ever since.

Why hadn’t she viewed them as a real threat?

She’d been a fool to assume she’d left her utterly defenseless days to the past.

“Now,” he begins, “for your preparations,” and tugs her forward so that her balance is upset and her composure ruffled. He unsheathes a copper dagger from his gown sash and soldiers snatch each of her elbows when she resists, pinning her still for his ministrations. “Don’t grow unpleasant, Queen _Mhysa_. No one desires that.”

“What do you desire?” she challenges.

The Copper King merely smiles.

His dagger tip lingers at the base of her throat, digging in just for a second, just a prick of pain, before it ventures lower. The clasp of her dragon pin is yanked off and her riding attire gets cut away with a long jagged slice down the middle, soldiers and their careless hands yanking the scraps from her shoulders, stripping her down to nothing. With impersonal motions, they shackle her in chains of gold and ruby. A copper collar around her throat joined to bands at her wrists and ankles, leaving her an opulent captive, limited in every reach or step or shift of her head, baroque in display.

They even take the time to unwind the remnants of her braids, mussed from wind and water, drenched and redried crisp, loosing the mess of it and leaving it unkempt, as if to undo all her victories of pride, every triumph the intricate braids once represented. Inglorious, even in the grotesque extravagance they’ve forced on her.

It’s all games. That’s what she remembers of Qarth. A glimmering mirage built on empty illusion and misguided perceptions. Lies and tricks meant to project and deceive. All this show means nothing to her. She does not cower or quake. She won’t allow them satisfaction.

When they lead her from the garden, parading her down the golden streets for all to witness, as if this is her judgment day, she’s faced with teeming crowds. More than could possibly occupy the city on an average day, as if they’ve come from far and wide to attend this moment, ships overflowing in the harbors. Merchants and middle class clap and cheer, tossing broken pieces of slave collars at her feet in mockery of all she stands for. The sting of leather and brass glancing off her body never once makes her flinch. Neither does the ugly malice in their delight. This loathing is nothing new to her, however bitter and wounded her heart.

No matter how loud the roar grows, no matter what jeer she hears among the voices or sees in the myriad expressions of the sheep she parades past, Dany remains impassive, her chin high, her eyes cool. The only thing that threatens to penetrate her detachment is not those that scorn her, but the quiet in the chaos. In a blurring sea of faces, some stand stark, even as she tries not to notice them. The slaves with their heads bowed in solemn respect, refusing to look upon her when she passes. The loss of hope it’s clear they’re feeling, those not skilled enough to mask their dejection from their masters. It’s those that break her heart and fill her with shame, not the enemies who’ve torn her bare to take pleasure in her powerlessness. Her great disgrace.

The Breaker of Chains, shackled and collared.

Conquering of the conqueror.

Where is Drogon? What has happened to him? Did that unholy horn kill him? Did they find him rendered defenseless as they did her and butcher him? Or was he left to sink to the bottom of the sea?

What of Rhaegal and Viserion? Were they strayed far enough to be spared? Did they return to Meereen when they felt their brother and mother taken down?

Her head is too thick with fog from the horn’s lingering effects to feel any of them through their emotional tethers. All she is left to is the darkness, the helpless questions, the resignation to defeat. Despair for her family, her people, terror for the unknown fate of her children. Perhaps she may still turn this around, if she can survive. She has faced worse odds, hasn’t she? She has overcome darker circumstances. So many times she’s stood on a similar precipice, when all was lost, and she’d managed to shift the tide of fate to her favor.

This feels different.

But she breathes, so she is not yet defeated.

Daenerys Stormborn will forever remain unsurrendered.

**+**

**_“Never cage a dragon…”_ **

Her walk of supposed shame ends at the towering majestic entrance to the Hall of a Thousand Thrones. Their capitol palace for the rulers of Qarth, the Thirteen Enthroned Pureborn. She meets a Spice King, a Silk King, a Gem King, a Salt King, and of course the King of Copper who keeps close to her with that smarmy smile. The rest come and go without introducing themselves, uneager to venture too close, regarding her as a rabid animal that’s been rashly captured. Wise of them, she’d say. But the five who style themselves kings are too pompous not to gloat and preen around their prize.

She’s led into the Crowned Chamber. High domed ceiling, stained glass arches, marble floors, and a crescent dais of thirteen intricately carved wooden chairs, immense and towering, studded with glittering jade and lapis. Bathed in sunlight, everything styled open and bright, eerily welcoming. In the very center, a throne of gold, blood red rubies embedded in its curves and crevices, raised pointedly higher than all the rest.

“We constructed this especially for you, my Silver Fire Goddess. Come, sit, come! You will look resplendent in your rightful seat.”

This first long and harrowing day, she can’t figure out the joke, can’t understand their intentions, but refuses to inquire and encourage them on. Eventually, she realizes the bizarre game. She will be denied the respect of a queen’s execution. This is to become her gilded cage, her regal prison, and her their housebroken pet. Declawed, submissive. Their grandiose mockery delivered in the form of illusory reverence, they attach her collar to her throne by heavy gold chain and usher in all the denizens that wish to pay tribute to their patron goddess.

Dany sits every day on her throne, attending men and women that come from far and wide to the port city, visiting the Hall to bow before her and beseech favor of some kind. Few of them are sincere in their superstitious belief that the Mother of Dragons holds power over fate, that laying coin and riches or paltry belongings of personal importance before her throne will grant them some mystic boon. Few of them are desperate souls or greedy believers. Some are aware of the game and enjoy playing their part in the caricature the Thirteen have crafted. They grin and wink and snigger and leer, trading jabs at her over her head with the Thirteen along their crescent. Whoever comes, she must sit and stay silent and stare them down. She will not submit to their games, but the only defiance left to her is to remain statuesque.

The Thirteen find glee in elaborating on the world beyond Qarth to her. She can’t believe a word any of them say, yet she knows some of it must be true.

Her dragons are missing, Drogon lost to the sea, Rhaegal and Viserion in hiding.

The fleet she ordered across the Jade Sea for Yin was scattered and stranded by the storm of sorcery. When word arrived of their queen’s predicament, they sailed the long way south around the island of Great Moraq to return to Dragon’s Bay without risking the narrow enemy territory of the Jade Gates. Only half made it home.

Meereen seeks allies along the Essos diplomatic network, but the forces loyal to her, her Unsullied, her Dothraki, her Second Sons, her freedmen, all the cities sworn to or aligned with the Stormborn Coalition, none will dare take direct action against Qarth. Not with Queen Daenerys as their hostage. If they managed to survive a march across the Red Waste to Qarth’s walls, if they sailed their fleets into the Jade Gates, they would run the risk of earning their queen’s throat slit before battle ever began.

Rumors spread about the sorcery that stole the Mother of Dragons and her children from the sky. The sorcery of the storm, the sorcery of the dragonhorn, and the supposed sorcery of her collar. The Thirteen make sure the world believes that her collar is cursed with death magic. Should she be broken free of it, the life will be sucked from her, poured into the Shadowlands ruby at its choke.

Whether that rumor is truth or more illusion, even Dany can’t tell.

She spends unending months staring numbly at the complex mural on the ceiling, paintings of embellished victories. Days blend together. Her mind drifts away from this place, this cage, this collar.

Chained to this throne for the rest of her existence, if she cannot escape it, she begins to think is the crueler punishment. A kinder end would be to set her out in the City of Bones. With no dragon to come for her, there would be no salvation for the Silver Dragon Mother. It would not be quick, would not be soft, but it would be mercy in exchange of this throne.

This carousel of humiliations.

She sleeps on hard marble below the dais. She eats what they spread before her, sometimes a game of starvation and scrabbling for scraps, sometimes a show of feasts and indulgence. A chamberpot is brought forth only when she requests it. A slave will sponge her over with a small basin of water to keep her clean, but only if the smell of her offends a Thirteen. They pet at her hair and simper over her, sawing off excess when it grows too long for their liking. They deprive her when she gains too much pudge, ply her to fatten when she protrudes too much bone. She is never clothed, never afforded privacy, only occasionally earning the favor of a Thirteen, enough for a blanket or bath. She is given not a single choice in her existence, not even the smallest. And she is never unchained.

Her time is spent in silence, a senseless reverie, satisfying her spite with detailed fantasies of how she will return their favors. Flames, burnt flesh, charred bone? No, too quick, too merciful. Limbs ripped from bodies, flesh stuck in Drogon’s teeth. In her head, she guts them, garrotes them, castrates them, peels their skin from their bones in slow stripes, crucifies them as she did the masters of Meereen. Their imagined screams in her dreams soothe her for a moment at a time, soothe her enough to settle the futile rage and allow her some self-control when it threatens to break. But she is fooling herself. She sees no way out of this. Her only escape is to end it herself. And she is still far too defiant for that.

Spite keeps her alive. It is a powerful motivator.

The only comfort not hollow that she’s granted is her rare earnest visitors. Slaves who slip quietly into the Crowned Chamber when no one is looking, in the late night or early hours before dawn. Some never say a word, just lurk in the shadows, on the fringes, too afraid to come close. Some press their brows to the marble at her feet, paying the Unburnt Mhysa homage. Some are brave and kind enough to offer her soft touches and sympathetic words, reminding her that she is not forgotten, that she is still loved, that there are still those that await in hope beyond these walls for the Breaker of Chains and her glorious comeback.

There were taunts, presumptions and hopes that her Dragon Empire would crumble without her, that her followers would disband and turn on each other, erupting in chaos. Slaves assure her that prediction has not come to pass. Her people are loyal, her people are strong, her people remain united under the Stormborn shadow.

Still, these assurances don’t stop the lies.

Of all Thirteen, Copper expends the most attention for her, seems the fondest of her in his own sick fashion, the most delighted by playing with her. He regals her with torturous tales of the cities she’s conquered sliding back into slavery. He muses over the suffering of the freedmen she’s liberated, how they are worse off without their chains, all the economies she’s crashed, all the people she’s sunk into squalor, telling herself she’s making the world a better place as she ruins it. All the typical tall tales of the owner class. Their wealth is earned, deserved, not stolen. Their slaves are well cared for and right where they belong. And to destroy such glorious cities and systems is a travesty.

These are the moments she finds it the hardest to rein in her temper. To tamp down her thirst to lash out and draw blood. To react in ways she just cannot afford right now. But she cannot listen to Copper go on and on with this drivel. She sends her mind somewhere else, numb and bored, dulling the dangerous whiplash fury.

“I have been enslaved many times now,” she says one day, words spilling imperiously free before she can catch her tongue. “I would rather die standing than submit to a comfortable life chained. Because that is the great lie, isn’t it? That there is comfort in a slave’s existence. That there is peace.”

She regrets responding to his provoking instantly, his flashing grin of smug triumph making her teeth grit. Now he knows where to focus. It is an old familiar exasperation, something that took her back to her early days in Meereen. That is why she forgot herself. She will not debate him on these merits. She will not take the bait again.

Sometimes, she feels as if she must spend any more hours listening to rich weak men lament the fall of economies built on the backs of a million better people and their miseries, she will crack her skull on the marble just to shut them up. Wealth dependent on suffering should burn to ash. Let the economies go up in flames. Better that than flourish off the slave trade. She can’t stomach their whining.

 _Let us all suffer together then_ , she thinks irreverently, _let us perish._

Among their favorite topics, they also enjoy boasting about their plots with all her hidden enemies. It is in this that she realizes early on they are not clever enough to have been behind her downfall. She is Qarth’s top attraction, drawing in voyagers from all across the world, sailors who dock and spend coin, so they’re profiting enormously off her presence. With her hostaged here, they are safeguarded from the wrath of any Stormborn loyalists. Keeping her here, keeping her alive, ensures they aren’t crushed into the dust under the brutal might of all her devoted armies in revenge. But it also keeps Stormborners strictly focused on Qarth. An epic target painted on their heads. A treacherous balancing act.

Intuition tells her Qarth is the puppet. Pawn or perhaps sacrificial lamb.

Their boasting eventually confirms this suspicion when they start mentioning these shadow enemies more in depth. She was right to assume someone or something else concocted this plot. The most obvious would be Yi Ti Emperor Lo Gai, the figure that lured her easterly to begin with, crossing her into Qarth’s trap, but the Thirteen claim there are many more, a triumvirate alliance of behemoths.

 _Choi Lin_ , the Gem King reveals one night, deep into his cups, the name slipping from his tongue by accident. But once it is voiced, he leans into the mistake to prove he is unafraid of having made it.

Southeast of Yin lies the island of Yeng, home to the Choi dynasty and their divine God-Empress, Choi Lin.

Gem tells her so circuitously of how Choi Lin’s jealousy and resentment bloomed over time along Daenerys’s rise. The God-Empress, like Yin’s emperor, takes immense offense at the Targaryen Queen’s umbrage. To their own account, these Further East rulers are sacred and eternal creations, no mere meager royalty. They spent years seething as more and more talk of the great Silver Dragon Mother swept the Further East, building in fervor and praise.

“The divine Empress decides: Oh, now that she effectively controls the west half of all Essos, something must be done to vanquish this pale she-demon,” Gem illustrates. “It’s said she’s the most potent sorceress in the world, you do know? Ah, of the divine Empress Choi Lin, whom not even the oldest of the deadliest Asshai shadowbinders could hope to compete.”

And so through the empress’s machinations, a powerful triumvirate was forged. The funding for such campaigns came from Yin, the magic from Leng, with Qarth propped between them as their proxy. The puppet master Dany has been wondering about, this Leng sorceress. If the Thirteen are to be believed, she wove the dragonhorn that downed Drogon and the dragoncollar that binds his mother now.

It’s the Salt King who finally gives her word of her lost son, after so long of so much unanswered worry and grieved fear. In an unexpected moment of cruel kindness, he catches her alone and reveals, “It’s the sorceress that stole your dragon.” Hooking a finger at the gold on her throat in demonstration. “He wears a collar much like yours. Woven with the same magic of the horn, it keeps him sickly enough to contain.”

“What good is a dragon to contain but not control?” she wonders, relief leaving her limp on her throne. She knew he wasn’t dead. She knew it. Once in awhile, she still feels a vague spike of his rage inside her cold heart. But she had worried it was all her pitiful imagination. “Why keep him alive merely to cage him?”

Salt wings a brow at her. “For similar purposes we keep you, I suspect.” Then he bows and backs away, just the hint of a soft smile at his mouth, murmuring, “Queen _Mhysa_.”

Haunting her hollow throne, Dany takes all these puzzle pieces whispered to her from various directions over the span of time with heavy grains of salt, but still a picture of clarity begins to form, an intricate map coalescing in her mind. And plans, so very many plans, for when she gets this goddamned collar off.

There is always political intrigue to disrupt the monotony, of course. The Thirteen are eels always plotting against each other, and she is a valued weapon to wield, which she entertains herself with every once in awhile, manipulating them as they manipulate each other, thinking to manipulate her. But their schemes never reach any fruition that might benefit her, so it is indeed nothing but entertainment in the end.

Early in captivity, Dany is caught eyeing the ornate braziers around the room and testing the limits of her leash. The braziers of copper and coal, replenishment oils hanging along the columns. They taunt her with the temptation, entranced by the flickering flames and their alluring dance.

The Spice King scoops up her hand, drawing her off the throne, further across the room, encouraging her towards the nearest fire. Behind her, she hears the clink and drag of her chain, feels the heaviness slowing her down as the slack grows tauter with every step. Then he stops, stares deeply into her eyes while he lifts her fingers to his lips and kisses her scraped knuckles to make them sting. When she sneers, he moves swiftly backward to where the brazier awaits, grip tightening painfully, yanking her forward farther than the chain reaches. Hardly even an arm out of reach of the brazier, the chain catches her collar and cuts into her throat with a choking blow, ripping her off her feet and slamming her bare battered body to the marble.

Just out of reach of her beloved salvation.

Spice laughs uproariously, all those in the Crowned Chamber joining in, enjoying her torment as she gasps, trying to fight air through her crushed throat, spools of horrid gold snaking all over her body as she skitters across the floor, gaining slack. Above her, Spice mocks, “Oh, no, no, my little Fire Goddess. We’ve heard all about what you did to the Great Khals in Vaes Dothrak. You will not be rising from the flames today.”

Under the cut of the collar, her voice is lost for weeks in the aftermath of that particularly cruel lesson.

Other lessons are less devastating.

When the Silk King corners her in the dead of night, no spectators to be found, she’s immediately aware of why he’s come. She knows that mean hungry look in men’s eyes. She’s seen it countlessly. She knows when they intend to debase her, take control of her in the ultimate sense, and make themselves feel powerful by weakening her. He entices, then he mocks her, and then he enrages. Grabs her by the throat at her cool derision, just above the collar, forcing her onto her toes, forcing her to choke. He grazes a proprietary hand up her body, from her hip to her breast, twisting a nipple to try and make her cry.

They do a lot of things to make her cry out. She never makes a sound.

“Silk and Silver,” he purrs, breath rank in her nose enough to earn a grimace even with her lack of air. “We could make such a fine pair.”

Dany doesn’t think twice. She doesn’t contemplate a calculated submission to his lust as she once did with Khal Drogo. She is not that scared little beggar princess. She has come too far. She will never be forced backward in her winding path. It has been too brutal, every triumph far too hard won. She pulls a move Nymeria Sand took vicious pleasure in making her practice, catching his cock and balls in a vice, wrenching a certain way.

His screams wake the Hall.

She endures twenty lashes of the whip as consequence, which they make a spectacle of, ushering in an audience of nobles, concealing it from the believers that might see lashing a patron goddess as invoking wrath from the skies upon them all. But none of them ever attempt intimate liberties with her body after that, so she’d say it was an effective lesson on her end more than theirs.

Every little victory counts for something. And she looks desperately for anything resembling victory these days, taking them where she can get them, building herself up with them while her keepers work to break her down. As time goes on, it seems more and more likely they will succeed. She tries not to, tries to hold off the selfish self-pitying thoughts, but she can’t help feeling abandoned. Forgotten.

Nearly a year now. It takes eleven months for Daenerys Stormborn to break her own chains.

Except…

**+**

_**“Something so savage…”** _

_“Will you fight for me?! As free men?!”_

It’s not the Breaker of Chains who truly frees herself.

When her legions finally do cross the Red Waste to march on Qarth, it is from land and sea and sky in unison.

Jolted from miserable sleep by a spike of fiery wrath from the other end of her soul tethers, Dany is stunned to see smoke in the sky beyond the open veranda across from her throne, warfare surging in the distance. The city walls are burning. Dragons scream their bloodthirst, swooping and scorching. Rhaegal and Viserion. She didn’t expect them to act without her, didn’t expect them to follow her legions. Rather than relief and pride, she’s panicked. Terrified.

_No, no, you can’t be here!_

_Why did you have to come, my loves?_

She wrenches futilely against her collar, desperate to get free before the horn resounds and downs her remaining children. She wrenches and writhes against her chains until blood seeps at her fingertips and she can’t breathe. Until her attendants rush in and clamor around her in frantic fear and worry, quelling her self-harm, forcing patience on her, forcing sanity. As afraid as they are for themselves in the city assault, they are dismayed by her discomposure.

“What is happening?” she questions. Commands.

“Your children burned our fleets,” the attendant slaves inform her. “They demolished through our blockade on the Jade Gates to usher in your Stormborn armada. Your Dothraki khalasar wait in the City of Bones. The walls are coming down. The khalasar will come in. They will slaughter us all. They will rape and burn and—”

“They won’t,” she interjects fiercely, but then falters. Can she promise that? She is in chains. She is a slave. The Dothraki despise weakness. They won’t have come to rescue her. Avenge their khal with indiscriminate destruction, yes, but they won’t obey a slave.

Dothraki trekked the Red Waste to reach their Great Khaleesi.

All the despair, the defeat, the lonely numbness that had eaten at her cold heart all this time is burned away under a revitalizing spark that explodes within her. A breath of life, a cleansing fire. The dragon awoken. Her heart once more warmed with love and hope and faith.

In the distance, Rhaegal and Viserion roar.

In the distance, trebuchets arc flaming missiles from her ships, raining destruction down on the plentiful ports of Qarth.

In the distance, all that destruction shakes the stone around her, trembles the very ground beneath her feet from so far away.

Chaos reigns.

Chained to her throne in the Crowned Chamber, she’s helpless to affect the war at her door. Just as she hears the slow boom, boom, boom of battering rams at the Hall, the Silk King arrives from the east wing with the dragonhorn in his grasp, fearful and furious. He’s shaking the horn at her in emphasis, yelling as the booms grow louder.

He’s accusing, demanding, “What have you done, Dragon Whore?! What tricks have you played?” He snatches at her leash, yanking her close, shaking the restraints to make her collar bite at her neck. He shoves the horn into her face. “Fix this. Whatever you’ve done, undo it. Or else you’ll wish your dragons had fallen. If they raze this city, you think you’ll be saved? They won’t save you! I swear to you, you’ll die before these chains come off!”

She has no idea what he’s talking about, but instead of admitting it, she bares her teeth in an icily disdainful snarl. Calmly, coolly, “You and all you cherish are going to burn alive in a few moments. Do you know what it feels like? To burn? How your skin melts off your bone? Have you ever seen what gets left behind?”

In truth, she’s still terrified for her children, terrified of that horn he waves threateningly in her face. Because of that blinding terror, it takes her longer than it should for the obvious question to occur.

_Why hasn’t he blown the dragonhorn? What is he waiting for?_

It’s not working. That’s obvious enough, once she can hold a clear thought through her panic haze. Still, she can’t run the risk she’s wrong, can’t waste the chance she’s given, Silk preoccupied by his own panic, that cursed horn forgotten in his hand. She snatches for it, kicking into his kneecap to imbalance him, spinning to slam her back into his chest, gaining better leverage to wrestle the horn from his grasp. Just as she gets ahold of it, he shoves her off, stomping a foot on her chain to stumble her. She tries to rip it out from under him, horn clutched to her chest, but he backhands her down to the marble. As she’s dazed, he kicks at her stomach, reclaims the horn.

When he blows it, the echo is drowned out by the cacophony of war. Because nothing happens. Her sons don’t react, not but for another round of vengeful screeching. As for their mother, she feels no pain of her own from the sound, no reverberation in her bones, no pierce into her brain, not like last time.

Neutralized, or switched with a mimic, empty of magic.

Dany had no hand in this. She tried and failed at least a hundred times to find a way, to manipulate, to bargain, to scheme a way of ridding the world of that dragonhorn, ridding the world of the only true power it may hold over her children. She worked harder to destroy that cursed horn than she did to escape her own collar. Every time, she failed.

Someone must have succeeded.

“I told them it was a mistake to hold you here!” Silk seethes, throwing the useless horn aside. He reaches for her then, pulling her off the floor, bruising her collarbone, fisting a hand in her messy loose mane, forcing her closer as she strains back and thrashes. “I would’ve kept you chained in my bed until you were all used up then tossed you out with the rest of the refuse. Any bitch with a silver wig could’ve played our Fire Goddess to hold your barbaric dogs at bay.”

There is a deep abyss of bloodlust within her. A well of dark rage that she painstakingly buried for sake of her captivity. Beautiful savagery of the animal inside that she unleashes now at his words and the war cries outside the Hall.

After a moment of letting him crush his mouth punishingly to hers, Dany bites his lip to make him jerk away. But she doesn’t let him. She hooks her hands behind his neck, pulling him down. Instead of a kiss, she arches past his jaw and bites into his ear, teeth sinking, wrenching with all her strength until it rips off. Feral, vicious. She spits blood and flesh to the marble. As he howls in agony and disbelief, scrabbling away, she follows.

The City Watch that came in with him hurry forward to get between them, but they never make it. Before they get anywhere near her, Dany’s timid attendants surge from the fringes, slaves swarming, descending upon the armed pair like a pack of jackals.

Picking up excess chain as she goes, Dany kicks at Silk, tripping him onto his knees. She winds the thick gold around his neck and lifts her knee into his shoulder blades, jerking taut, choking him. Tightening into a vice, prying the life from him as her dragons roar across the sky.

Until a blade slides across her throat, presses in, cold and sharp, freezing her mid motion. “You don’t want to do that,” the Spice King warns with ominous intent.

It physically hurts her to slacken the chain, allowing Silk to slip free, collapsing to the floor, dead or unconscious. Dead, she can only pray.

“Call your beasts off or I slit your throat.”

“Slit my throat and my sons will take your limbs between their teeth and pull you to pieces.” Blood in her own teeth, smeared at her chin, she is unafraid, infused with the heat of bloodlust, vengeance and vindication. “You will live just long enough to feel that pain. The last thing you will see is my sons chewing you down.”

“More hot air from the helpless slave!”

When the blade nicks her skin, she pulls a Nymeria move, quick and desperate before it can slash her. Twisting his thumb with one hand while her other wrist hooks between them and bats his outward, all in the same motion that she kicks her heel into his shin. As the blade goes wide, she spins with it to face him, tugging against his grip on it to gain leverage for kicking higher, driving the flat of her foot into his chest. It knocks him back, ripping his wrist from her grasp, and she follows, swinging her shin up hard between his legs. He turns his knee, blocking her, batting her away. He lunges for her and she evades.

Before she can get far, he catches the chain in her wake and yanks. She clutches at her collar, struggling to keep it from crushing her throat as she’s forced to stagger back towards him, straining against it. She trips over Silk’s sprawled body and falls right into Spice’s fist, snapped low in a gut punch. The blow doubles her over, staggering, breathless. He shoves her back into her throne, falling hard into the seat, Spice towering furiously above her. She curls into herself, body paralyzed, reflex tears streaming, struggling to shake off the effects.

“My sweet Silver Fire Goddess,” he sighs, making a mockery of sympathy and fondness. “You could have remained here forever, safe and cared for. We would have worshipped you unto eternity.”

“Worship?” she scorns, still gasping.

“Now you must die.”

“Must I?” she drawls, sardonic.

“You cannot leave the Hall of a Thousand Thrones alive, you understand? If Qarth must fall, so must Daenerys Targaryen.”

“How do you expect to escape with your life?” she challenges. “I am the only shred of leverage you have left.”

“You are nothing more than an anomaly of nature, my lovely creature. You could have been marvelous, had you chosen a better path. Yet you let the power you were gifted go to your head with the fanciful delusions of a silly spoiled girl throwing temper tantrums. That kind of power never belonged in a body such as yours. Far be it from me to tell the gods they’ve been mistaken, but we both know you were never meant to exist.”

“Men have been telling me who I can and cannot be, where I do and do not belong, for as long as I’ve lived. Do you know what happens to these men in the end?” she menaces.

“Queen _Mhysa_ ,” he condescends, his smile sickly sweet as he grazes clammy fingers down her cheek. “You should have never aspired to uplift yourself to such undeserved heights. You were right where you belonged in the Dothraki Sea. You should have lived your last days as Khal Drogo’s bought and sold whore—”

A broadsword bursts out of his chest, punctured through from behind. She doesn’t scream, she doesn’t jump, but she blinks in surprise, a quick intake of air, then watches unflinchingly, frozen. With an aggrieved gargle, he clutches at the protruding blade, even as it jerks out again, slashing through his hands. His slur forever unfinished, the King of Spice drops lifeless, revealing Jon Snow.

In the white noise of her head, there’s only one thought that penetrates Dany’s stunned numbness.

_He came for me?_


	8. Chapter 8

**I HEAR THE BELLS  
[the bells of hell]**

**+**

_**“Liberation comes in a thousand shapes…”** _

_He came for me._

_He came._

_For me?_

_That can never be trusted._

It’s been seven years since her awakening. Seven years since she was allowed a glimpse of her fate at the other end of the crossroads, given the chance to turn the other way, heeding warning from unknown gods. So much progress and then… Fall. Capture. Betrayal? Was she betrayed from within or beaten from without? Kept in a palace, slave collar of gold around her throat, chained to a decadent jeweled throne.

While the Thirteen kept her as their glorified pet, Drogon had been taken elsewhere. Blocked from her dreams, cut at their tether, that string winding between their souls, Daenerys and her children. They told her that he wears a collar similar to hers, explained that it was constructed by a sorceress from the island of Leng to enslave him. Her darkest dragon, her fiercest son, a slave.

The Mother of Dragons, enslaved, held as their hostage, thinking her empire will crumble and disband without her to wield her dragons. Suffering indignity and disempowerment in silence, her faith in the empire of disparate devotees she had built waning, her innate insecurity of claims to love and be loyal growing, her hope fading away. And then the world stuns her. People come. For her. In her name. When she has nothing, when they have no reason to fight for her and everything to lose, they cross the killer Red Waste and barrel through the Jade Gates and they seek to liberate the woman that had once been queen.

She had liberated them. Saved them. Now it would be their turn.

It is only to be expected, no? It is only what she earned, isn’t it?

So why is it stunning? Why had her faith in them ever faltered?

Because it is all she has known. The second she has been left vulnerable, vultures have descended. Supporters have abandoned. Friends have betrayed. Lovers have destroyed her.

In another life, she saved the North. Liberated a cold rough people from an army wearing the face of Death itself. She had been foolish enough to expect their gratitude in return, their loyalty, their love. Instead, she was disdained and discarded and forgotten.

In another life, she had been convinced that was the nature of man. That was all there was to be found in the world. That was all it would ever be worth.

In another life…

In another life…

Dany releases all that baggage to the wind like ash on her palm. Disillusionment, resentment, loneliness, isolation. That feeling of being wounded by a world that has failed her. That feeling of longing for life to be different. The feeling of bitter blame towards those that wouldn’t live up to what she wished. That feeling of ever only having herself to be counted on. Open wounds become scar tissue, festering finished.

In another life, she was alone, all her achievements unraveled, her soul poisoned and dark, her name ruined.

In this life, she is whole and surrounded. Her name means more than herself. She is legend that will live on far beyond her inevitable end. And her person… She is the furthest from alone and abandoned as possible. She has made a world full of people who will always come for her. People who see her, truly see her, who choose to look through the caricature facades her enemies construct. They see who she really is. That proof lies all around, if she only remember to look, to not be blinded by self-doubt and disappointment and hardship. She must remember to look.

Today, she is liberated from burdens far more crushing than this heavy gold chain.

She is not alone.

No matter what happens now, she will never be alone.

It doesn’t matter why Jon Snow is here. What he seeks to earn or take from her. It doesn’t matter. Her people came for her. They came for her because they love her and want to see her chains broken as she had freed them from their own.

_I don’t care what he wants._

_They came for me._

As many years as it has been since she laid eyes on Jon Snow, setting aside the fact that she has never laid eyes on Jon Snow in this life, that he had existed for so long solely as a plague of half formed memory and terrible prophecy, something that could have been dismissed as dreamings from a madwoman… When he arrives to fruition in reality before her, it is an anticlimactic thing, bogged down by the shock and havoc all around. He arrives with the deliverance of harsh death, looking even more tired than the last time she saw him, in the Chamber of the Painted Table on Dragonstone. He arrives as a soldier emerging from the battlefield, coming to her aid in her moment of most urgent need, dragons arcing through the sky, ships raging at the shores, city falling to a flood of Dothraki horde beyond the battered down doors of the Hall of a Thousand Thrones.

With the great clang of the doors coming down at the first entrance, soldiers have invaded the Hall and set to slaughter. She hears their boots on the marble in the corridors, hears the cries and the clashes of metal from their killing. City Watch and Qartheen fighters and all the highborn that have sought refuge behind the barricaded doors of the grandiose Hall, only to be left sitting ducks as her forces push ever inward. Slaves have run for their lives, like rats fleeing for escape in whatever hole they can scrabble to, or simply hoping to ride out this sacking invisible and ignored in the shadows. Some slaves have also swarmed the crescent dais to linger nearby, blood of the City Watch on their faces and fingers and feet, eager to help but still fearful and wary, waiting to recognize another opportunity to intervene victoriously.

It was evidently the dragons that tipped the scales after so long of reluctant ceasefire and finally sent her forces eastward into war for their queen’s rescue. But it is still a great risk, even with Rhaegal and Viserion lending surprise to their sea front assault, that anyone could have followed the threat and slit her throat before her men managed to reach her. They risked her life, but it was a necessary risk. And they held faith in Daenerys Stormborn, faith that she would do her part and endure until they could cut a clear path. She knows this is what it was, knows it in her bones so very suddenly, so very vitalizingly, and doesn’t for a second wonder if it was just that they didn’t care.

Still…

Of all the people in the world, it’s Jon Snow who came first through the doors when they fell, massacring his way to her, killing the lords and their soldiers that stood in his way. He must have broken off from the invading phalanx and gone rogue, off on his own in search, because he is alone in the Crowned Chamber when the King of Spice collapses. Just Jon, Dany, and her brave faithful slaves.

Her new freedmen, she vows. The second she is free, the second she retakes her power, they will never be slaves again.

The White Wolf is almost how she envisioned him, a little older, a lot tireder, but it is that same scarred face, those same bronze eyes, soulful but haunted, same black curls some other Dany ran her fingers through to grip tight and kiss the man. The same violent wildness restrained beneath slow somber caution. He stands over her, a towering shadow of panting animalness with a bloody sword in its hand, merely a corpse separating them still, frenzy of battle heat cooling bit by bit as he watches her.

It’s the heady touch of that dark stare that finally shatters her shock and that protective shield of numbness. Awareness rushes in, so very unwelcome, especially of the vision she must present. Naked and chained, blood drying on her chin and in her teeth, silver hair spilling tangled down her body, curled pitifully into her golden throne. That gilded cage, a prop for her ridicule, salt in the wounds of her deconstruction. As soon as it does rush in, Dany stands shakily from her graceless slump, stuck staring at the dreaded mirage before her. Mirage made reality. Dreams turned to distorted truth.

_Beware the wolf._

_Remember love wherein the trap lies._

When he advances, she backpedals. Flinches from his reach in a way she never allowed herself against the attentions of her Qartheen captors. Watching him warily. He hesitates, deliberates, decides to risk resting his sword against the throne, to hold up his hands then in a sign of surrender, of placation, like calming a spooked horse. Everything about him morphing forcefully from enraged aggression to disarming patience. He shows her the key at his palm, the key to unbolt her collar from its chain, where he had first aimed for.

“I’ve not come to hurt you, Queen Daenerys.”

It’s a vow more than a reassurance, a lackluster thing even through its sincerity, clinical and minimal. There’s nothing intimate in his voice or his eyes or the mask of his face. In his approach, in the stare, in the way he says _Queen Daenerys_ , more title than name. No intimacy, nothing remotely personal or experienced, just a nameless soldier addressing a foreign dignitary, just a stranger, come for whatever reason to help. This leaves her more shaken, more unsure, than anything else.

In slow and precise motions, he steps over Spice’s corpse and reaches for her collar. She is frozen, painstakingly rigid in her stillness as his roughened hands slide tentatively along the gold, dusting tangles of hair out of his way to expose the lock at her nape. He is forced to work the key in by reaching over her shoulders because she refuses to give him her back. She can’t seem to stop searching his face, can’t seem to take her eyes off him, deeply troubled, horribly anxious, but he is focused on his task and inscrutable.

The lock pops and the chain clatters loudly down the floor, freeing her from her leash, loosing her at last from the Throne of the Silver Fire Goddess, though not yet uncollared. As the weight drops away, she shies instantly around him, putting the corpse between them again.

He rotates with her, keeping her in sight. Those quiet dark eyes go to where her fingers curl agitatedly at the collar under her chin, and he says softly, “I’ve only got the one key. Sorry.”

Dany gives him a jerky nod, just wanting him to stop talking to her, stop looking at her. For a moment, frozen breathless within the cage of his arms as he moved to unchain her, she’d peered intensely at his stoic face and wished he would meet her eyes. Wished for a bridge. Something she remembered only from her dreams. A tether not unlike that to her dragons. A connection, a communication, something that had once made her feel so incredibly seen and partnered, then devolved to leave her invisible, empty and cut adrift. That was a moment ago. A moment of insanity where she had held her breath and demanded, _Look at me, Jon Snow, see me._ Now she can’t stand the pressure of his eyes fixed on her.

It wouldn’t matter if he had the key for her collar anyway. It’s supposed to be cursed. It’s supposed to be designed to drain her life away if she should try unwinding the wretched thing. She’ll have to consider this carefully before she may truly be freed.

“Are you alright?” he asks, but when she tears her attention from the veranda to give him a flat look, he nods once, dismisses, “Right. Dumb question.”

Dany can’t tell if he remembers. Remembers how she remembers. A past life which never occurred. He acts like a stranger. She can’t tell. He’s careful to look away from her searching gaze, to keep his face impassive, his gruff tone measured. She can’t tell.

Perhaps that is actually for the best.

Perhaps she was mad all along and imagined him.

No, that doesn’t make sense. Here he stands.

She has always seen what no one else sees. Dragons in her dreams, a fire she may walk through unburnt, the world calling her mad. He doesn’t know what she knows, see what she sees, feel what she feels. He can’t ever understand this half life, this double vision, because he is not like her. It’s better this way. It’s better.

But what has the raven whispered in his ear? What evils of hers has he been enlightened to? What secrets and lies does he wield to gain the upper hand here? Because if she has gotten to know anything of the Three-Eyed Raven and his habits over all these years of meddling and failure inside the confines of her mind, it is that ravens are omens and tricksters. Showing you want you wish for, twisting it to use against you. Showing you shadows on the wall of whatever will ensure you arrive at the impetus the raven insidiously inclines.

_Beware the wolf who heeds a raven’s caw._

Nothing to be done about that yet.

Next he moves, breaking the room’s stalemate of tense stillness, it’s only to rip a tapestry from the wall. Then he returns to her, wordlessly wrapping it around her shoulders, bringing its corners tentatively to her hands at her chest to cover her. As if she has a shred of modesty left that he can salvage. Or perhaps it is from his own discomfort. It doesn’t matter to her. She is unimpressed by the gesture either way. But the touch of the fabric feels abrasive on her skin, the weight of it feeling wrong after her body spent so long sitting bare. Yet still she clasps it closed like a death shroud around her, swamped and stilted.

It’s another strangeness, finding her balance without the anchor of her chain. She worries she might tip over or overextend any moment now.

She is still frozen with him here in the shining cavernous Crowned Chamber with war raging beyond its walls, frozen until Unsullied finally flood the room, led by her most loyal Grey Worm. A man not nearly as surprising to see as the King in the North, but much more relieving. Her eyes slide over Jon’s shoulder to land on him and elation sparks through her, shattering the paralyzing dread.

“ _Torgo Nudho_!” she breathes out hard, rushing past Jon to throw herself against the legion commander, tapestry still clutched in her fists, bare body scraping carelessly against his bloodied armor. But right behind elated relief is worry. She pulls back from clinging to his neck and scans his frowning features. “You’re supposed to be on Naath. Has something happened to Missandei?”

“Missandei is safe,” he assures, as rigid and dour as she remembers. “We’ve come for our queen.”

Beyond the veranda, Rhaegal’s battle cry snaps her from her haze of scattered vulnerability and Dany collects herself, pulling the queen’s cool mask over her distress. She lifts her chin and says strongly, “Rhaegal and Viserion shouldn’t be here. The Thirteen have some kind of weapon. A dragonhorn. It brought Drogon right out of the sky. The Silk King had one in his possession that proved to be false, but the true horn could still be within grasp of one of the others.”

“The Thirteen are dead,” Jon vows, tone flat, expression dark.

She looks between him and Grey Worm unsurely. With his usual scowl, the Unsullied tells her, “This man is Jon Snow, Aegon Targaryen, our queen’s nephew. Ally in our cause to free our queen. He speaks truth.”

“All of them?”

“All but one,” another voice volleys irreverently, and she turns to see Prince Oberyn Martell swaggering in with a haggard Dothraki khas on his trail. Unarmored men bloodied and sooted from battle, stolen riches hooked on their necks and shoulders, shiny things picked up as they passed by so many spoils. “But he won’t provide much threat from his shackles.” Rather than relax at that news, her eyes go down to the object in his grasp, which he then makes a show of examining. “War spoils, Silver Queen. It’s a beautiful piece of sorcery.”

Dany lurches in his direction before yanking herself up short, forcibly stilling, staring hard at him, waiting for him to decide.

She hasn’t seen Prince Oberyn in years, not since he left Meereen to join Dorne in announcing rebellion against the Iron Throne. He had become a dear friend, a trusted ally, but these things change. Their last conversation in Meereen…

Has he bent the knee to Jon Snow? As rightful heir to the Iron Throne? If he had, she’d be viewed as a threat to that claim. Last reports promised her that he’d relinquished his birthright, held no interest in reunifying the Seven Kingdoms. But was it true? Or has it changed? She’s been gone for so long, isolated, out of touch, out of power, trapped in the dark with only venomous rumors to rely on. Has he bent the knee?

Have they come to take the last of her dragons from her?

The last of her power?

It would be quite a thing… Convince her forces they’re allies in the quest to save their queen, use the invasion to get close, to claim the horn and its abilities for their own, or eliminate her and wield her dragons as their own weapons in the west.

Would Rhaegal and Viserion obey Jon Snow? With her and Drogon gone, who was always the more dominant of his brothers, she isn’t sure.

With the dragons under their control, perhaps even the Dothraki would bend to Jon. The Unsullied would never, so they would need to be slaughtered to be gotten past. But if the Unsullied stood alone, under the full khalasar and two dragons and whatever strength Jon and the Dornish have brought with them, it would be a simple enough endeavor.

It’s only a moment of paranoia and panic before it’s gone.

Prince Oberyn flashes her a devilish grin, then tosses the intricate dragonhorn and its coveted abilities at her so unworriedly. She snatches it from the air and spins urgently, thrusting the wretched thing furiously into the nearest brazier.

The second it lands, fire explodes high to the ceiling, wild sparks of sizzling green and blue that blind the room, searing all their eyes. Before she can react, she’s yanked backward by one of them. Hands bruising at the crooks of her elbows, crushed against a leather armored chest before the initial rushed grip unclenches and a protective arm hooks around her, turning her behind a broad body in shield, her face still averted from the dangerous magic.

As it dwindles, she looks over her shoulder to realize she’s in Jon Snow’s grasp. She stiffens, withdraws, forcing her attention back to the crackling brazier. It’s natural fire now, but she sees the horn intact through the orange flames. With a frustrated curse, she shoves her hand into the fire and reclaims it.

“Perhaps it will have to be dragonfire,” Oberyn suggests.

“Yes.” She turns to face her men, lifts her chin, face smooth again. Queen again. “Any word on Drogon?”

“There’s been no sighting of him since you were lost,” Grey Worm gravely informs.

“Very well,” she intones darkly. Resolvedly.

Walking past them all, she holds her head high along corridors littered with bodies and debris. Her soldiers follow close at her heels, protective and anxious of having their queen in a war zone, but she doesn’t let them swarm her or forge ahead of her. When she reaches the battered down entrance, she takes a moment to absorb the damage lain out across the city below, bracing herself with a few steadying breaths. Then she unwraps herself, casts the tapestry aside, and exposes her exploited body once more to all of Qarth.

Dany summons her sons with a Valyrian beckoning to the sky and they answer eagerly, screaming desperately and excitedly at her for attention. They swoop down and light the path ahead of her aflame. The grand stairs beneath the Hall, what stretches between their mother and the fallen city. As it burns, she descends the stairs, walking through the fire for all to see, commanding their surrender, inspiring them bow down before her. Rebirthing herself in the flames again. Reclaiming her power.

Dragonfire melts the cursed collar right off her throat. Rubies and gold warped and liquefied. Cursed collar, nothing but a paper tiger.

_“Tell the bitch her beast won’t come.”_

_“A dragon is not a slave.”_

**+**

_**“Silver’s soldiers, Dany’s devotees…”** _

In laying siege to Qarth, all the boys she loves come to rescue her. Grey Worm, Ser Jorah, Prince Oberyn, Theon Greyjoy, Rhaegal and Viserion… Even this … Jon Snow.

He hadn’t been summoned like the others. Neither had Theon. Her sweet broken pirate was at Winterfell with the other woman he felt indebted to, doing what he could for the Starks he had once betrayed, when word came of Qarth’s boon. When a northern party resolved to sail east, Theon chose to join them. When she sees him there with the rest, she hugs him as she did Grey Worm. Stunning him. Dany asks him why, and he answers, “My sister is busy being queen, but she doesn’t need me now. Neither does Sansa, not when she’s safe in Winterfell, got all of the North dedicated to her wellbeing. And I know, with everybody you’ve got, you don’t need me either, but I felt like this is where I should be. I know you didn’t need me, but I wanted to come for you anyway.”

Ser Jorah led the charge, best he could, driven near mad all the time he was forced to inaction, sickle over her head should they make a move toward her. Clashing the Qartheen legion in the City of Bones left him grievously injured, but tended by the best healers, he will heal. He is the third man she uncharacteristically throws her arms around and squeezes tight with no decorum, while he winces and bleeds and squeezes her back with all the strength he has left, burying his weathered face in the curve of her neck, rough against the soft skin there. Her devoted old bear from the miserable North. The greatest thing the North ever gave her. “My Queen,” he murmurs, heartsick and happy, begging her forgiveness, “I couldn’t get to you. I couldn’t reach you.”

Grey Worm sailed from Naath the moment news arrived of their queen’s fall. He insisted his beloved Missandei stay safe on tranquil Naath while he set off, and his beloved Missandei insisted otherwise, so Dany finds her sister once more by her side. When she asks how long she will stay, when she gives her free leave to return home, Missandei only smiles and says, “Naath is lovely but life does get boring without you.”

And Oberyn… Well, in hindsight, she should’ve known Oberyn would come. House Martell may merely be her fair weather ally, but Prince Oberyn and his Sand Snakes are war ready friends. Not just friends. Beloveds. Right beside Missandei and Grey Worm. Right beside Theon Greyjoy, whom she hadn’t realized just how deeply their bond had burgeoned before he and his sister returned to Westeros.

Nearly a year in Qarth, she’d felt forgotten. Only once she’s freed, she learns how wrong she was. No one sat idly by.

There were thousands of attempts to rescue her, organized and rogue, from high and low. No armies marching in, because that would’ve endangered her too greatly. But underhanded tactics, spies and assassins and stealthy rescue missions aimed at infiltrating the city. No one ever got close enough to her. They were never able to pierce the enchantment cast on the Hall of a Thousand Thrones, much like the House of the Undying, that which turned it into a labyrinth maze where men would wander in unending circles until they wasted away to bone. Any who approached the Hall with intent to free her got snagged in its web.

The High Priestess Kinvara of Volantis is the one who finally broke it. After eleven months of faithful operatives and adventurous mercenaries and desperate slaves trying to break through. Sailors in the ports, double agents in the city, foreign traders supportive of her cause, dissenting Qartheen. It was a Hall slave who finally accomplished the immense feat they required to pave the way for her legions. A slave that had visited Dany all this time, coming in at night, paying quiet tribute in the dark, holding her hand when the loneliness grew too strong. This slave, this woman named Janta Zol, stolen from the Summer Isles as a child. She is the one who connected with the High Priestess come secretively into their city, weaving her magic, who helped Kinvara finish her work, then braved the deadly risk of swapping that unholy dragonhorn with a mimic. Without Kinvara and Janta Zol, her people would never have been able to come for her, too afraid that any action they take lead to her death.

In gratitude, Dany raises the slave to her Queen’s Court, gives her all the riches and respect she could want for.

Kinvara, she keeps close, appreciative for and willing to utilize, but still watchful and wary of.

After hours of destruction, Dany takes Qarth for her own, and then comes the days of restoration.

Tempted as she is to burn the wretched city to the ground, leave it ash and dust, her time of captivity has given her the opposite of what they’d hoped to inspire. For all their poison and humiliations, for all the effort they put into breaking her down, Dany has instead found a restrengthening of her core.

She’d feared she was forgotten. She’d feared she was nothing without her power, the authority she used her dragons to instill. A symbol, a tool, a vessel of reformation. What happens when her dragons are taken from her? What happens when her power is gone? What happens when she is no longer able to free the slaves, order the armies, or force oppressive overlords to their knees? Do they forget her? Forsake her?

No.

They came for her.

The Dothraki, the Unsullied, the freedmen. The Dornish, in Prince Oberyn and his Sand Snakes. The Greyjoys, in sweet Theon and the fleet of ironborn his sister gave him to command. And Jon Snow, with seven thousand wildlings in tow and a borrowed Dornish fleet to get them across, none of which she knows what to make of yet.

They came for her. She had nothing and they came.

All the cruel highborn and merchant class of this city jeered and mocked her, looked upon her stripped down and debased, took such pleasure in playing up the charade. The way they would lay tribute at her feet and request favor of a goddess. Simpered over her beauty and majesty and divinity, just to rub her face in how far she had fallen. They deserve to burn. They deserve fire and blood. The sky falling down upon them at her imperious command.

The old Daenerys might have sicced her dragons and Dothraki on this city until it was nothing but rubble, grinding them and all they ever built into the dust from whence they came. She might not have even paid heed to the innocents caught in the crossfire, the children, the lowborn, the slaves. Except… The old Daenerys had been painstakingly refined over the years since her awakening and she refuses to allow a few vile men to undo all of that growth.

This is her true test, isn’t it? Will the lie fall apart, of having changed, evolved? Can she endure something so horrible without reverting to the monster who wanted the whole world to burn to ash?

Rather than run for their lives, her attendants overcame their sick terror and battered the Spice King’s guards to death before they could get their hands on her. Soldiers that had terrorized them for all their collared existences, soldiers with weapons.

As the rage and wrath burn in her blood, seething for fire and violence, she thinks of the slaves that would sneak in and visit the Crowned Chamber. In their own miserable existences, their hopeless suffering, they had the generosity and compassion to offer her comfort. They loved her, held faith in her, even when she had nothing. At her lowest, they still looked to her.

All the doubts that plagued her for so many years, before and after her awakening, melt away.

This is what she was meant for. This is her purpose. This gives her happiness and fulfillment. Being who she is, being Daenerys Stormborn, being the Mother of Dragons and all that it brings, this is enough.

The Thirteen, these small men, will not unravel the woman she has worked so hard to become.

Restoration, she resolves, but first a proper purge.

The very first day of her reign here, she watches her dragons destroy the House of the Undying, as she had wished to do the last time she was here, the first time Qarth had trapped her with its trickery magic from men who thought to enslave her. The Undying Ones were burned before she sailed from Qarth all those years ago, and now she renders their temple to the dust, along with all the warlocks within that worked to trick and tribulate her and her children now. She stands on the veranda and watches her sons circle and screech. All the stones of that cursed tower crumble under blasts of fire powerful enough to force it asunder.

The City Watch is stripped of their duties. The Qartheen legion swears fealty to Queen Daenerys and is marched immediately east to clear a route and set a blockade in the Bone Mountains. The ports are taken control of by her own Master of Ships of choice, a trusted armada commander more tailored to mercantile than military. Meanwhile, she rousts the sailors and smugglers who deal in slaves and other contraband, makes it clear the trading capital of the east and its Jade Gates are no longer open for that sort of business. No slaver will enter, nor pass.

Dany takes her time compiling a list of names, Unsullied rounding them up, intent on burning them in execution under Rhaegal and Viserion’s breath. Pureborn, highborn, merchants, masters. She took pains to memorize their faces when they came before her on her mummer’s throne, to mock or beseech or exploit. She doesn’t burn any and all who dared to delight in her degradation. Only the ones that made her list, those particularly egregious to her peace of mind.

She’s within her right to penalize her enemies. She makes no effort to justify herself. And no one is brave enough to question her motives or ethics on this matter. If any disagree, they don’t show it, not like they did when she crucified the masters of Meereen.

Rather than burning them one by one or in a herd, Dany hesitates, changes her mind. She ushers them into the Crowned Chamber together and chains them to the crescent of thrones. Then she stands on the steps and commands her sons to destruction. There is vicious satisfaction in watching the Hall of a Thousand Thrones come down in a storm of melted gold, broken glass, and crushed stone. Qarth’s ruling class is ash and bone buried under that rubble and Dany takes her first free breath since falling into the Jade Gates.

In the aftermath, she commandeers the many manses left empty and uses them to host her migrated forces. Turning out their surviving families to fend for themselves without their stolen riches. It’s an incongruity that pleases her, soldiers and savages occupying spaces meant only for masters and merchants. She imagines the revulsion on their faces, watching lowborn take over their homes, sullying their properties. Yes, it pleases her. The slaves that scrubbed their marble floors under whip lashings now walk those floors as esteemed denizens. Unlike how she took Meereen, what’s left of the former ruling class in Qarth are too cowed by violent defeat to protest the new world order.

With the repatriated wealth of the slavers and conquered businessmen, she tasks the new class of freedmen with rebuilding in the place of the destroyed Hall, a tower housing for themselves this time, so that they never need return to the filthy slums of their slave barracks. She gives them liberation, she gives them fair work, she gives them justice for the horrors visited upon them as best she can offer.

As always, the city economy suffers from the swift restructuring, but it will rebound with careful cultivating. She sets them with self-governing councils of the different castes to see to that themselves, only lends aid and resources where required, because she hasn’t the luxury of devoting her extended time to Qarth as she did for Meereen and cannot concern herself with the minutiae of their restoration era.

There is war still to be done. Retribution left to be had. Brewing beyond the ever eastern horizon is promises of her undoing, and she will not have them succeed. She is willing to suffer for her cause, certainly her stay in Qarth proved that much, but she will prevail.

Fire and blood for her enemies, freedom for her friends.

Dany seats herself within the sprawling opulent manse of the Spice King, turning his spectacular solar into her war room.

Next task, after Qarth has fallen and risen again in her name, is hunting out all those that helped them in their plot. The Thirteen were merely a mummer’s show. Her true enemy lies ever easterly in the Golden Empire of Yi Ti. And the island of Leng. If stories are to be believed, she’s less concerned by an emperor and his infighting army, more wary of the powerful sorceress who felled her dragon.

Finding Drogon first and foremost, breaking her dragon’s chains.

When her closest counsel first tries to sway her to returning to the safe cradle of Meereen while they fight for her, she balks. “I will not cross the Red Waste until my son has returned and my enemies on this side of it are dust.”

Once freed from her dragoncollar, Dany’s head clears and her dragon dreams return. Puzzle pieces from Drogon’s perspective lighting her way…

**+**

_**“Butterflies could be crushed…”** _

The first night of freedom in Qarth isn’t what she dreamed.

Despite a day of victories and reunions, Dany is restless and disturbed. She has taken private chambers of luxury, yet she paces the marble with bare feet. Missandei offered to braid her hair after she climbed from the bath, but she said no, left the tangled silver mane to hang unkempt as it had for this year. Missandei offered to slide into that massive canopy bed of silk and plush comfort awaiting her, offered to hold her while she slept, but she said no. She sent her away, back to her own room, back to her lover.

For some reason, she couldn’t bear the thought of taking that comfort, finding that solace in her sister, in something she’d missed so dearly, dreamed of so longingly. When the offer is finally presented, it is a pressure pressing down on her. She wants Missandei here, but she wants her to go. She wants to be held, but her skin crawls at the thought. She wants to lay down, but her body won’t stop moving. She wants the quiet, but her mind is racing. Her chains have melted to nothing, but she is still a dragon on a leash.

She doesn’t want Missandei to see her this way. She doesn’t want any of them to see her.

It’s not fear. She doesn’t know quite what it is, but she knows it’s not fear. It’s not even anger. All that burned out with the dragonfire cast over Qarth. It’s just … something. Something else.

She is surrounded by loyal Unsullied Queen’s Guard and Dothraki bloodriders who would die to protect her, but first slaughter any and all that dared threaten or disrespect her. She is safe. She is insulated. She is free and protected and cared for. She is in control. And yet…

The bed feels strange. The gown she wears feels strange. The empty enclosed chamber feels strange. Impatience is her only prominent emotion and she cannot fathom why.

Half into the night, she discards the gown and lays down on the hard clean marble floor, naked and unchained and free to choose. It feels like a little surrender, but she is too tired to resist. When shame tries to swell up inside her, she squashes it down. She is Queen Daenerys once more and she will do as she likes. It’s not letting them win if they’re already dead and gone. She just needs time to adjust. She just needs rest.

Once Drogon is returned, she will be herself again.

It sounds like a lie, but she vows it, convinces herself of it with fierce resolve.

_Once my son is home. Once his chains have been broken._

As dawn breaks, she is awake and standing and dressed again before Missandei comes to stir her up. The floor is clear, the bed is mussed. There is no sign of her dysfunction. Yet still… Missandei peers inside her with those dark kind eyes and Dany worries that she knows.

Which is silly. If anyone would understand, intimately understand, what she has gone through… If anyone could possibly relate to the after effects of such experience, it would be Missandei of Naath. Her loved one, her dearest friend, her sister. She doesn’t want to hide from her, but she can’t seem to make herself lay it all bare.

Time. She just needs time.

She just needs to keep going. Move ever forward.

“What is the focus for today?” Missandei questions.

So Dany answers gratefully, “We must clear the disorder.”

**+**

_**“When dragon interrogates snake…”** _

The second day, she retreats to her chambers for solitude only to find Prince Oberyn awaiting, chair claimed for himself, kicked back and comfortable, ankles crossed and feet propped on a table edge, fingers laced on his stomach. He is his usual self, lazy and cocksure in that way of his that proves too warm and genial to be abrasive, that she used to be powerless but to indulge with exasperated fondness. She’d missed him almost as much as Missandei, while she’d been exiled in Meereen and they’d gone off to live their lives without her. But as with Missandei, now that he is right here in front of her, she finds herself resistant.

She is still vain in many ways, she’ll admit.

It irks her when people she loves, people she craves, choose to wander elsewhere and be happy without her. As if their worlds should revolve around her. It’s not a trait she likes about herself, which is why it had been so important in the beginning to leave Missandei and Grey Worm to Naath, precisely because she so desperately did not want to. It was the right thing for them, and so if she could not put their wellbeing above her own selfishness, then all her words of love and liberation would prove false. Perhaps it is only natural to feel jealous and left behind by the ones she wants, to feel as if she should be the center of them, when she touches so many people, shapes so many lives. When she is queen, when she is called goddess, how can she not feel like it is right to be their sun? Natural, expected even, but not admirable, and not acceptable.

Those are feelings she’d had, kept secret to herself, after Oberyn and Ellaria and his daughters returned home to Dorne. Some secret silly resentment, nonsensical and unjustified. They left her alone in Meereen. It didn’t matter that she was still surrounded by loyalists and friends, that she still had Jorah, that she still had so very many people in truth. It didn’t matter. She didn’t feel that. What she felt was Missandei and Grey Worm making a home on Naath, forgetting her. What she felt was Daario and Yara and Theon and Oberyn and Ellaria sailing west where she could not bear to go, leaving her behind. She felt a bed empty of lovers and her heart abandoned. They preferred Westeros, where she would never be welcome. They preferred somewhere else. Somewhere or someone better than Dany. There would always be better.

Envy, spite, longing, even grief. But she has not ever once given into self-pity, not for the drastic brutalities or the insignificant stings. So no one will ever know of these things.

It is not what she feels that makes her who she is, but which of those feelings she chooses to act on.

There is no reason to be resentful of this man that she came to care so deeply for. There was never any expectation that he would forsake his family and House and home in order to remain at her side. It would’ve been an unreasonable request. He never betrayed her trust. He simply went home when called for. And then he came back for her. When she needed him, when she was stripped of power and title and dignity, when he had no obligation to take this on. He came for her.

No, it is not that previous resentment she feels when she finds the charming prince in her chambers. Much like with Missandei, it is an inexplicable aversion to his presence. Not because of him, but for the discomfort that encompasses her now. The leeriness. The fatigue.

Before Qarth, she used to be so endlessly lonely. She used to crave company and contact of any kind. When there weren’t lovers in her bed, there were friends, or handmaids. She didn’t like to be alone. She didn’t seek out solitude.

Now it feels like she can’t breathe with people around. No matter who they are, no matter if she loves them and trusts them and wants them close. It’s not fear, not even the irrational sort. It’s just pressure. Being in the same room as someone, speaking with someone, it has become an exhausting thing.

She hates this. She must overcome this.

She’ll sleep naked on the cold hard floor for the rest of her life if she may only banish this awful aversion.

Must she exile herself into the mountains to live out her life only with her dragons?

That would be their greatest triumph, wouldn’t it? Turning the Dragon Queen so that she no longer tolerates mankind.

Spitefully from that thought, she’s driven across the distance that had seemed so insurmountable a moment ago, but now proves all too short. She knocks his feet to the floor, making his chair straighten with a jolt. Before he can quip at that, she drops herself across the prince’s lap, derailing whatever thought had opened his mouth, earning just a faintly surprised hike of his brow, that easy smile still unaltered. She locks her arms around his neck and plants her head where his shoulder meets his neck with wordless determination.

All the turmoil and recoiling that threatens to rise up, she pushes forward through, ignores, beats back. This is her friend, her human friend, and she will be held. There is no shame in her difficulties or her vulnerabilities, she knows, but they will not conquer Dany.

“How is my formidable Silver Dragon coping?” Oberyn wonders, after hours of poignant silence, his voice deceptively offhand.

It pushes her out of his arms, bringing her back to her feet, spine stiff, shoulders squared, chin lifted. To give herself time to find the right words, she pours two cups of wine and sets one near him as she passes by to linger around the unshuttered veranda. She sips at her drink, fingers fidgeting with her gown. She doesn’t want to lie, but she doesn’t know what the truth is in that answer.

“Drogon is alive. I know it. I feel it. Out there somewhere in chains and calling for his mother. They enslaved a dragon and that cannot abide. But he lives. That is all that matters to me now. It must be.”

“To free your child, you might need to free yourself first,” he warns, and she spins to look back at him, to soak in the intent on his face, so full of uncharacteristic concern and tenderness. The meaning in his message.

“I’m trying,” she confesses, clutching her gold chalice tighter.

On a lighter note, still so skilled at diverting her attention and manipulating her moods, he continues, “And what of the other wild animals of your heart? How are you coping with those?”

“Come again?”

With the arm he’s hooked over back of his chair, he arcs his fingers in the air, suddenly sly. “Well, face to face after so long with your wild wolf can’t be easy.”

Dany goes abruptly rigid under his keen gaze. She’s startled for a second, that he knows, that he reads her so clearly. Then startled becomes alarmed and aggressive. “Have you told him?”

“That the Three-Eyed Raven mucked about with the past and diverted all our paths? He’s aware, I believe.” He’s so infuriatingly casual, so irreverent, she almost pulls at her hair. Then he adds, “That there once existed an original road where you were in love and tragic?” And all her breath leaves her body, frozen in horror, flashing back to long buried devastations. It must show on her face, however she tries to remain impassive, because Oberyn only lets the tease sit for a second before he turns sympathetic. “Why would I ever tell him that? My sweet Silver Dragon, I swear to you, I would never give anyone such ammunition against your heart.”

“You should not have brought him here,” she rebukes.

“Oh!” Oberyn laughs. “I did not bring him. When the missive arrived, there was no stopping that man.”

Dany’s frown becomes more confusion than accusation. “Tell me, how is it that the Red Viper of Dorne did come to arrive this far east with a fleet full of northerners?”

“I will confess, once the unrest in the south had settled down, I grew bored and took on an expedition to indulge in my curiosity.”

“Meaning?” she deadpans.

Oberyn laughs warmly again. “Meaning I might have ventured north into that expansive ugly iceland and hunted down my favorite Silver Dragon’s White Wolf. Just to get the measure of him, you understand.”

“I never said—”

“You loved a traitorous wild wolf who broke your heart in the worst way imaginable. You knew things you should not know, even more in detail than what little I myself had glimpsed, enough to change the course of our histories. You yourself freely divulged that Jon Snow, King in the North, the White Wolf of House Stark, was secretly Aegon Targaryen, son of your dead brother, heir to the Seven Kingdoms. The world we live in now predicates Daenerys Stormborn and Jon Snow had never met in the flesh before yesterday. Yet you insisted you knew what the man was made of. Please don’t insult my intelligence, darling. It was hardly a daunting mystery to unravel.”

“Fine,” she drawls, put upon by the way he frames it. “So you went to Winterfell to cause trouble—”

“To investigate,” he corrects, holding up a finger. But the impish grin at his lips ruins the effect.

“Investigate. And do I want to know your conclusions?”

“I wouldn’t want to risk offense,” he teases.

Dany rolls her eyes. “So you were in Winterfell, getting to know their king,” she prompts.

“Not an easy fellow to acquaint oneself with, is he?”

“No,” she murmurs, momentarily melancholy, lost in an imagined past. She shakes it off swiftly enough. If she won’t give the horrors of this last year permission to haunt her, she certainly won’t allow Jon Snow to. “If you weren’t honest with him, how did you explain your presence?”

He shrugs it off with a careless, “Diplomacy.”

She doesn’t know if she believes him. To her knowledge, Prince Oberyn has never lied to her. But that does not make him honest. Could it be as simple as him traveling north to measure Dany’s traitorous wolf, knowing how much she still yearned for the idea of him?

“What did you hope to accomplish?”

“As I said, I had no determinate goals. It was merely curiosity and fascination at first.”

“At first. And then?”

“I might have been persuaded, by certain meddlesome daughters with romantic notions, into possibly pushing such a wolf in the direction of our lovely dragon. After all, our benefactor has given so much to us. Why shouldn’t we look to her wellbeing?”

“My wellbeing? Driving Jon Snow eastward was not the way to do that!” she snaps, setting down her empty chalice before she hurts her hand.

“I didn’t push him east. I pushed his thoughts in your direction. That is all. I might add, without giving up any of your secrets. Really, there was no need. You and your wolf are the last two Targaryens in this world. It’s only natural that you should have ties of some kind. I can tell you, I was hardly the only one in Westeros to have brought your name up to him, once his parentage was common knowledge.”

“Yes,” she drawls, dry and bitter, “I’m sure there were plenty of advisors pointing out how advantageous my elimination would be. The suggestions of assassinating me before I could challenge his claim were most likely more bountiful by far than any hopes of beseeching my military aid in their wars to come.”

“By far,” Oberyn agrees with that slyly amused viper’s smile. “Only outnumbered by the proposals for a marriage alliance.”

Taken aback, Dany falls distractedly into the chair across him. “They wanted him to marry me? Westerosi did?” She shakes her head as if coming out of water, casting aside the alluring fantasies. She remembers how Westeros reacted to her in the flesh. She mustn’t ever forget. “My allies in the south, yes? It couldn’t have been any Northmen.”

“Not Northmen, never Northmen,” he jests, mockery for the northerners clear in his expression.

“And Jon?” she asks before she can stop herself. Hating the question, hating how small her voice sounds even more.

“He was resistant to any and all talk of you,” Oberyn tells her, not unkindly. However gently he delivers it, however fiercely she’d convinced herself she doesn’t care, it still stings. Still a letdown. Then he lifts his tone and carries on, “We were still idling in that dreary Winterfell when the raven arrived from Sunspear, telling of your ensnarement. Nymeria had stayed behind when we went north. Your Second Sons commander reached out for her, and she reached for us, so that your allies may do all they were capable for your sake.”

Dany swallows hard. She’s staring at her hands on the tabletop, how these fingers furl, pronouncing the knuckles, scraped from her desperate fights in the Crowned Chamber. Her fingers look so delicate, but she knows how strong they are, how sturdy, how durable. The strength it takes from these hands to ride a dragon. “Tell me.”

“I tossed the scroll on your wolf’s war table. Without a word. Jon Snow rallied.”

“Because you pushed him,” she whispers.

“I had nothing to do with it. I intended to leave him and his doomed North behind with no delay. Getting to you was all that mattered. You sent help to us when we needed you. You facilitated our independence. We were never going to leave you to this fate.”

“You said he didn’t even want to hear my name. What changed?”

“I can’t speak to your wolf’s ulterior motives. All I know is that word came of your fall and he declared for your recovery. He asked his Northmen to follow him, to load up their fleet at White Harbor and sail east for the Dragon Queen, with the incentive that they would gain an invaluable ally in their coming conflict should they save you. Unfortunately, Northmen being Northmen, your potential assistance in their survival fails to outweigh the stigma of your name.”

Her mouth twists up wryly at the ludicrous thought, old bitterness at the northerners softened by the genuinely fond humor of his naivete. Some old other Dany, some loved woman she had never been, like a warm soft voice in the recesses of her mind, thinks affectionately, _My sweet Northern fool_. And then it’s gone again.

“Northmen being Northmen, they definitely don’t sail out to the Further East for any kind of Targaryen. It would be an uphill battle to get them marching to the Riverlands for a fellow Northmen, never mind any farther beyond their borders, never mind for an outsider.”

“Explorers, they are not,” Oberyn quips with a dry laugh. Then elaborates, “They were on rocky ground with their King in the North already, first the tensions from bringing wildlings down into their territory and demanding them fair treatment, but especially since the revelation of his true parentage and his refusal to be their puppet king in the south.”

“The Northern lords wanted Jon to take the Iron Throne?” she asks, surprised by this. She’d guessed they’d be offended by the very idea.

“Better a half Stark in the south sympathetic to their preferences than some southerner.”

“True.”

“The moment they understood his intentions, understood he would not back down from this, they dethroned him.”

“What?” She straightens in her seat with a jolt at that. Jon Snow, King in the North, no more? They revoked the crown they threw at him? Because of her? Because he wanted to help her? Dany doesn’t know how to feel about that. Any of it.

“He asked them to trust him, to sail east with him, fight with him, and promised it would be their salvation in the end. Instead, they turned on him. Crowned the cunning Sansa Stark their Queen in the North.”

“Sansa,” she sighs, because she is too weary to snarl.

Oberyn just grins, obviously reading something revealing in her eyes. “I have to say, not to disparage your tastes, my Silver Dragon, because I do trust your judgment, it’s just…”

“Yes?” she deadpans, already aware of what’s coming.

“Your wolf is a bit slow, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think,” she counters hotly, an instinct she regrets instantly. Why is she defending Jon Snow? She swore to herself she would never defend him again. And yet, she finds herself saying, “He’s not slow. He just has blind spots when it comes to certain things. Certain people. Sometimes, he’s very…”

“Yes?” the prince mocks with a knowing smile.

Dany finishes primly, “Naive.”

“Ah, well, what is naive if not dense?” he quips, but continues before she can interject, “Regardless, he underestimated his sister and he overestimated his lords and he was left with nothing in return. I expected then that he would have a change of heart and bow to their influence, but he snarled at me when I suggested such. Even with no men and no ships and no crown, he intended to join us eastward. What good he would have done, coming empty-handed to a ferocious woman who has amassed an empire, I cannot say.”

Jon always did lend more credit to his pack than they were due. It was their downfall once, in another lifetime, his and hers both. He assumed the Northmen would overcome their prejudices and see her for what she really was, would be grateful to her for all that she was doing and sacrificing for their sakes. He trusted them to be good men. He trusted his sister to be faithful and honorable. He trusted her so much, in fact, he betrayed the woman who loved him, who would give him everything.

“But then something surprising happened.”

“Wildlings,” she surmises.

“He didn’t ask them along. They volunteered to follow him. Oh, yes, on occasion, even I am caught off guard by men’s better natures. He’d saved them north of the Wall, went against his own people to bring them south. And so they were loyal and grateful and willing to repay the favor. They made him their King Beyond the Wall, which makes no sense for a myriad of reasons. For one, no Wall, no plans of returning to their homeland. Two, they shout about never being kneelers and they show no subservience and don’t appear to particularly listen at all. From what I’ve observed, he may point them in a general direction, but beyond that, finer methods of leadership appear lost on them.”

Dany laughs.

She laughs, surprising herself by how light and melodic it becomes. Experiencing his whimsical musing, the graceful gesturing of his hands, the husky honey of his Dornish accent, that gleam in his eyes, brings a soothing familiarity back to her. She finds herself feeling suddenly very bright and hopeful and humored, very like herself once more, imagining vignettes of Oberyn and his Sand Snakes on the sea, playing their mischief games with her sullen wolf as he wrangles unruly wildlings like the brusque Tormund.

It’s a soft moment, lost in those visions, an unguarded moment where she allows herself to forget the warnings of the past and the wounds that never quite healed and just remember all the joyful possibilities she’d once felt. For just that fleeting moment, she is kind enough to herself to allow the memory of how Jon Snow made her feel before it all went wrong. Back in the days when she was falling, falling in love like never before, and he was unwittingly opening a whole new world of possibilities to her. Back in the days when the future felt wonderful and limitless.

Even when Viserion fell, even through her grief, it felt that way. Because of Jon Snow. Her wolf, her love, her bastard king, before he was her nephew and rightful heir to the crown she’d bled for.

All that went wrong from there…

Enough time has passed that she’s now gone over and over that lost history so much, until all her bias peeled away and she could examine it with a clear head. Some of that downward path of tragic horror was his fault, his failures, his betrayals, and some of it was hers, and some of it was out of their hands altogether.

He disappointed her when she needed him most, after she had come through so many times for him, and she blames him for that. Might always blame him. Then she did something so abhorrent, so unforgivable, all there was left to her was a passage to hell. An end. A mercy. That old Dany, that woman who now has never existed, will never be permitted to exist, perhaps she could’ve been helped, but she didn’t want to be helped, and she certainly didn’t deserve to be. Not then, not once she’d become the creature they painted. Her higher mind says she cannot hold that last moment she shared with him against Jon Snow. But her heart won’t listen. Even now, after all this time of sitting with the haunting experience, all this time to rationalize and release. She does hold it against him. She mustn’t, but she does. Even if she allows him that, she knows better than to ever draw him close again.

Still, for the first time in so long, it is nice to lower her guard and welcome in those old joyful thoughts. To think of him and smile. It’s safe to do that now, isn’t it? After all, the Jon Snow she’s thinking of doesn’t exist anymore. Only in her memory. In a life unlived.

“And so my Nymeria commandeered quite a portion of her uncle’s fleet, with very iffy permission, mind you, since her philosophy is _better to be forgiven than denied in crisis_ , and they sailed north to White Harbor to board us, while we rode hard south to meet them, and then altogether down the Narrow Sea and across the Summer and straight into the Jade Gates to join your armada.”

“And I am immensely grateful to you and yours,” she tells him, reaching across the table to clasp his hand strongly. “You have proven more than faithful, Oberyn Martell, and I will not forget. Wherever you have need of me, call and I will come. Until my dying day.”

His grin sobers to something profound for a fleeting heartbeat. He pushes the pad of his thumb into her palm, caresses her knuckles, turning her elbow on the table as his second hand traces down from the crook of it to wrap around her wrist in slow precise motions, giving her plenty of time to balk from his touch. When she doesn’t, he tugs her gently from her chair to his, encouraging her onto his lap once more, winding his arms around her trembling body.

She’s not okay.

She won’t be okay, not for a long while, she worries.

They took that from her.

After so many years of working so hard to find peace of mind, to find comfort in her own skin, to find happiness and contentment with her place in life. She’d had it. She’d reached that evanescent achievement. She’d only just been settling into it, into that sense of security, no longer fearful and restless and searching. Now she’s back to the beginning, all she’d built within herself ripped out from under her, flailing for steady ground again.

She’s not okay.

Is this all that life ever is? An endless cycle of struggle? Fighting and fighting and fighting, with the world, with yourself, then finding fulfillment for a moment, thinking you’re safe and the fight is finished, then having it torn apart, only to start all over? Is there no final victory? No final joy?

Of course not.

Why did she let herself forget that lesson?

Life is cyclical, not stationary.

“Jon Snow sailed east because he needs my dragons to beat back the Long Night,” she whispers weakly into Oberyn’s intricately embroidered tunic, pressing her brow against his neck, skin to skin. He combs his fingers through her loose hair before drifting lower to stroke down her spine, just as he must’ve done a million times for his youngling daughters. “He didn’t come for my sake.”

As if patronizing an ignorant child, the prince promises, “That man did not relinquish his crown and journey to the other end of the world for your dragons, darling.”

That’s a dangerous insinuation. A treacherous enticement. It begins to glimmer inside of her like a lure and she is wise enough now to deny herself that fleetingly pleasant sensation, because it has only ever led her to ruin.

She doesn’t doubt his intentions. She doesn’t suspect scheming with her enemies and manipulation of her emotions. It’s just that…

He doesn’t see what she sees.

**+**

_**“Kraken among wolves, beast out of water…”** _

This Jon Snow is a mystery to her. Once upon a past life, she thought she knew his insides and their workings as intimately as her own. In this life, she looks him over and is left with nothing but questions. The sight of him makes her anxious and uncertain, dread stirring, buried hope, and all the old wounds reopened. She doesn’t know how to act around him, so she wraps the cold Dragon Queen around her and keeps him held at a safe distance.

Since that terrible wonderful day of rescue, Dany has been naturally preoccupied enough with the siege aftermath and city transition to have plentiful excuse in avoiding the man. The king. Her nephew. Since she left him behind in the Crowned Chamber and entered the fire, she has taken subtle pains to prevent a moment alone between them, to postpone his inevitable audience before the queen he has helped to liberate.

Such an arrangement can only last so long. As the turmoil in Qarth begins to settle and Dany’s hours are not so hectic, Jon Snow loses patience. It seems such an unbearably long wait, yet comes far too soon. She tells herself she is prepared, she is equipped, and then she is face to face with the man or his name is referenced and she panics. Before this can develop into a pattern, she turns stern with herself and breaks it. Something that starts with Theon, in fact.

“What do you think of him? Jon Snow?” he ventures nervously one day, working beside her in the rectory.

Various loved ones come to join her on occasion where she retreats now, withdrawn into the dark corner of this sanctum, pouring over the records and deranged scribblings the warlocks of Qarth left behind. They come one at a time and only after long stretches of solitude, pretending to help her research, though it is obvious they’re only here to sit quietly at her side and worry for her. The changes in her temperament make them disquieted.

She still sleeps on the floor. She still chafes under the press of her garments. She still finds her fingers scratching at her unadorned throat whenever she forgets to consciously pin them down. She still gets overwhelmed by too many people at once, too much time giving them her attention, talking and listening and engaging with sincerity, absent of the rote mummer’s show of torment she’d accustomed to. She still paces and screams silently in her head as Drogon’s captivity burns like fire in her blood and propels her into the abyss.

And none of that has anything to do with Jon Snow.

Dany flicks a dusty tome page and refuses to look across the table at him, even as his puppy dog eyes weigh against her from beneath a flop of reddish hair. She coolly deflects, “What would I know of him? We’ve hardly exchanged two words since the Crowned Chamber.”

“Because you’ve been hiding from him.”

That freezes her fingers from their page skimming. She takes a breath, flexes them, then raises her head to meet Theon’s imploring gaze. “It’s my prerogative to hide.”

His shoulders drop. “It is.”

“Why would it matter to you? What stake do you have in my attending to Jon Snow, no longer King in the North?”

“When we were on Naath…” he begins, but falters, reconsiders. For a moment, she thinks he’ll leave it be, backtrack. Instead, he gathers his words. “You asked a lot of questions about my growing up at Winterfell. You asked questions about the bastard of Winterfell. Aye, I’d noticed your interest and I’d wondered why. The way you’d look, listening to my brat brood stories. They hurt you, and they made you happy, and they made you sad, and then they made you confused. I didn’t understand why it was so complicated for you. I didn’t understand why you’d care. Then word started spreading about who Jon really was. It made sense then. You weren’t asking after my family. You were learning about yours.”

“I wanted to know about you, Theon,” she defends. Then amends, “And a little of Jon Snow. What childhood was like on that end of the world.”

“You wanted more than that. You wanted a connection.” He says it strongly, surely, but then softens back to his usual hesitant nature at her sharp look. She didn’t mean it to censure him. She just jerked. “I know what that’s like. You know I know what that’s like. I had a family I could hardly remember out there somewhere and I wanted to be a part of it. But I never could.”

“You are a part of that. I’ve seen how much Yara loves you.”

“It’s different now. Better than before. But not what I used to long for, you know? I had to let go of that old painting I had in my head of how it should’ve been, and all that I’d missed out on, before I could appreciate what I have now.”

With a put upon sigh, Dany closes the tome and concedes, “What are you asking of me exactly, little kraken?”

“I wouldn’t dream of asking for anything more from you than you’ve already given us, Your Grace. I’m only wondering why you hide away when the last of your family came so far to find you.”

“That all depends on what he expected to find, doesn’t it?”

“I won’t pretend to be included in his confidences. After what I’d done to the Starks, the way I betrayed Robb, he’d never trust me enough to reveal any part of himself. The only reason he let me live at all was what I’d done to get Sansa free.” Theon stands then, rounding the table of tomes to crouch at her side, peering up at her with that raw look he gets sometimes. That look which leaves her restless and self-conscious. He does remind her so much of herself, in such odd ways, it is stifling. “I don’t know anything about anything, I’ll admit it. I just think… Maybe you could help each other.”

“How could Jon Snow possibly help me?” she whispers bitterly.

“Only you know that.”

Turning in her seat to face him, she lays her palms open in her lap as invitation. After a moment of discomfort, he holds her hands. Once she has them in her grasp, she tightens on him, trapping him there, a coldness passing over her. “The Starks aren’t like you and your sister, Theon. They aren’t grateful, no matter how you fight for them, no matter what you sacrifice. The only loyalty they know is to each other. If you are not born a wolf, you will never be one. And you will never be welcome.”

“You talk like you’ve been among them.”

“The North only remembers what it wants to remember,” she tells him, sidestepping his puzzled questioning, fingertips digging into his wrists. “I will not save them. Do you understand? I will not condemn my people and my children to death in order to be the North’s shield.”

“I’d never ask you that,” he protests, clearly unnerved by her abrupt fervency, the desperation in her that must seem mad. “You already freed us once. I’d never ask you to fight for us.”

“Yet you ask me to lower my defenses for Jon Snow. That’s what he’s come for. You must know it.”

“Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t.” He’s staring at their hands, where she clutches him, crushes him. He doesn’t wince, even though it’s become undoubtedly painful now. He doesn’t try shaking her off. “I told you, he doesn’t give me his thoughts. I know it would be unreasonable, given what all is happening in the North right now, to take a northern army and sail east to save a stranger with no greater purpose.”

“Yes,” she agrees, can’t possibly argue, yet the wistfulness and resentment rides hard in her at that objective truth.

“That doesn’t make it the only reason.”

The glimmer begins reviving down deep in the bottom of that dark well within her soul and heart, a silly girl’s hope and yearning, that murdered girl who never learns her lessons. Dany blacks it out, ruthless and angry at herself, snuffs it out before it can brighten, before it can take hold and compromise her. She is not that girl. That girl is dead. That girl never lived at all. She is nothing more than an unlived memory that Dany casts rightly aside. Learn from her mistakes, yes, but she will never become that blinded fool.

And so she leaves Theon with an appeasing equivocation, pretending she doesn’t notice the fingerprint bruises on his pale skin and the weak spot that exposes in her. He was right in one thing.

Dany has no reason to retreat. No reason to be afraid. She is better than that. She is stronger than this. No more hiding.

“Bring me Jon Snow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of these cliffhangers are intentional. I'm sorry. It's just that these chapters are ending up way longer than they're supposed to be and I'm having to break them up. Really, I'd break them into even smaller segments if I didn't think it'd be too disappointing for you. Also, I've been skipping most proofreading, never mind any broader editing, trying to just get the next one out for you as quick as possible, so leave leeway for mistakes. Pointing them out would be appreciated too.
> 
> Jonerys is at the heart of this, I swear, but this story has always been putting importance foremost on Dany herself, her healing and building her own support system of loved ones and kinships, rather than pinning everything on just one person. And yes, Jon's POV will come, but the timing of the switch is pivotal.
> 
> Also, again, I'm genuinely sorry if last chapter distressed anyone too much. This story is meant to be cathartic before anything else, all the intrigue and symbolism, not make anyone even more miserable than they started.


	9. Chapter 9

**I HEAR THE BELLS  
[the bells of hell]**

**+**

_**“Blood of my blood…”** _

_“The Targaryens are gone.”_

_“Not all of them.”_

Dany waits for him in the sunlight.

In the solar turned war room, intricate mural of the Far East painted across the floor, long belvedere leading out to the garden she first woke in after her fall. Towering arched walls crawling with flowered vines, lending privacy, with an open sky where her dragons may enter. The crown of the reflecting pool, tribute to the previous Thirteen, is gone now after her sweet Viserion answered her distaste, curling his tail around the base and wrenching through the stone.

Today, her smaller sons laze nearby, Viserion along the top arch of the outer wall, one wing hanging down into the vines, while Rhaegal perches on the inner eaves. Dust sifts loose with every shift of their bodies, structures strained under their burdensome weight, but Dany just smiles fondly. Let the stones crumble if they will. They’ve been reluctant to stray from her side ever since reuniting, their distress at separation and their brother’s continued captivity leaving them needy.

Dragons above, her own distress is somewhat soothed by their company as well, trying to suppress the trepidation and anxiety, trying to retain the cool queen’s mask. She is unflappable and unaffected. This is nothing but a potential ally coming before her for conference. A foreign dignitary that has already proven usefulness and willingness to lend her aid. That is all this is. The same thing she has done a hundred times. The only difference is their kinship. The other last Targaryen. That explains her nerves. That explains. But she will not be bowed.

Pacing around the garden, she strokes a palm across her stomach and practices her words in her head. They change every few moments, undecided, writing over each other. Just as she feels resolved to one tact, qualms cut her off to another direction. She’s frustrated by her own fluster, impatient for him to come, for this to be gotten done with, dreading his arrival, her confidence having fled somewhere. It all leads to an irritable mood that threatens her coolheaded composure, something absolutely necessary for this incoming exchange. She must not be easily provoked today. She must not be emotional.

When Jon Snow crosses the belvedere, stepping from shadow into light, she turns to face him as a proud untouchable queen. Though there is an initial moment that catches her off guard despite all her bracing. Not the sight of the man himself, but the way Rhaegal unfurls his tail so it may swing down into the walkway in Jon’s wake, his purr vibrating the stone. Her eyes flick up to her green son and she is torn between fond humor and worried suspicion. A flash of the same poisonous paranoia she must work so hard to fight off, and she does fight it off, refuses to give it credence, because it is senseless insecurity. She will not be irrational. It is only natural her dragons take a liking to Jon Snow. He has dragon’s blood in him, buried beneath the wolf. They may like him. That is acceptable.

They will always be her children.

No one will turn her children against her.

Yet it does lead her to the most pressing of her curiosities. “How is it that a Northern stranger swayed my dragons to his side enough to follow him into battle?” she interrogates, a false idleness to her tone, and the bluntness makes him falter.

Had he expected a formal greeting? A friendly opening? Gratitude for his part played in her liberation? Perhaps he has earned it, perhaps not, but she is not inclined nevertheless. Open that door for Jon Snow and it may lead to a tenderness she cannot afford.

“Ask that Red Viper of yours,” he counters, just a shade belligerent against the undercurrent of accusation she’s laced this interaction with. He sets aside his brief spark of surprise, of imbalance, and schools his brooding features back to their shuttered default. In more moderation, he explains, “He introduced us. Convinced the rest of your champions that I had the best chance of anybody to appeal to them.”

“Two Targaryens left in the world,” she murmurs softly, trying to undo the damage she’d just done, the wrong foot she’d set them on right out of the gate. If she put him on the defensive edge too thoroughly, she wouldn’t get the honesty she wants out of him. “They took a chance. Understandable.”

“Your children came for you more than they obeyed me,” he says, just as she’d turned to move across toward the garden seating, and it stops her for a sharp choking moment. Not dragons, not gorgeous beasts. _Your children._ “I wouldn’t even make the claim they followed us into battle. We organized a three-pronged attack. They led the way.”

“After much coaxing from a stranger,” she persists, more gently this time in her interrogation. She resumes her walk, takes a seat at the table of white lacework iron and spread of imported foods, gesturing for him to join her. “How did that transpire?”

“Not smoothly,” is all Jon gives her, a gruff admittance full of past aggravation and begrudging arrangements. He hesitates where he stands for long enough to make things awkward before claiming a chair at the far end of the table, a fair distance between them that leaves her both relieved for it and offended by his choice.

“Did he take you to ride?” she demands, chin notching toward where Rhaegal sprawls overhead, casting shadows across the garden floor.

On occasion, after several years of friendship and companionship, Dany would ask Viserion to allow Prince Oberyn to mount him, and they would take flights together. Only ever for fun, never into battle, and only ever together. Viserion allowed it because Oberyn had flattered and bribed him over time the same way he had his mother. Viserion allowed it because she asked it of him. He allowed it the same way Drogon once, in another lifetime, allowed a pack of roughnecks onto his back to fly away from death itself. They did not command him, they were not his riders, merely passengers permitted into the sky.

In a past life, it was the very beginnings of something different between Rhaegal and Jon Snow. The very beginnings of, and then Rhaegal was shot out of the sky, abandoned to the sea.

Oberyn already divulged all that she’d missed in her chains. How her two remaining sons refused to even allow him close, too angry and panicked and fearful of who to trust after such betrayal that stole their brother and mother right out of the sky. Terrified of the dragonhorn. Too terrified to fly east again. They had retreated pitifully back to Meereen, had hidden themselves away in the Painted Mountains where they’d spent so long feeling safe with their brother, ranging from their mother. Any who tried to come close, they scorched earth in warning, then charred bones when it wasn’t heeded. They didn’t know who to trust. They didn’t know what to do against this mystery magic. They wanted their brother back. They needed their mother.

He told her why he resorted to encouraging Jon Snow into the mountains, after first arguing against it. Jon had arrived in Meereen with intent to engage her dragons, while everyone around him had been resistant of the idea. There were those that didn’t want him to risk himself, and there were those that didn’t trust him to not press his advantage and turn away from their shared agenda, take the dragons for himself and leave them alone in freeing their queen. Oberyn was smart enough to not trust the White Wolf, for any man would be tempted, smart enough to know it would be a gamble either way. It wasn’t until all his attempts had failed that he risked relying on Jon Snow.

Rhaegal wouldn’t let him ride. She knows this. But he did let him direct them in the Qarth siege. When to fly in, where to burn. Only after it was safe for them to venture through the Jade Gates.

When she was first told this, she wondered at that change, how Rhaegal took so naturally to Jon Snow in their past life, yet now refused. But she only first wondered. The difference dawned on her rather quickly. She knows. She knows why her son took him as a rider without hesitation or any work toward building a bond between the two.

For her.

He accepted Jon Snow because his mother was in love. His mother trusted implicitly. He wanted to make his mother happy … and the man made her happy. Things are vastly different now, here in this life, this new world. She’s never been sure whether they remember as she does, but they feel what she feels, senses her nature.

The dragons know. The dragons always know.

Her Dornish prince has told her all this, the trials and tribulations along the way and how they all arrived together in Qarth, her ragtag array of saviors. Even if she doesn’t unconditionally trust his word, Grey Worm has confirmed all his claims.

And yet…

She asks Jon Snow as if it is unknown to her. She plays a game with him to sate her own intrigue, to see what he will choose to say when presented a wide range of options. He must not be dense enough to think she hasn’t gained answers from her people, so it isn’t so much a trap, but the choice is his in how he frames the story for himself.

“Hardly,” Jon huffs, his eyes fixed on the table spread instead of her scouring stare. Every time she finds the steel to meet his gaze, he’s the one doing the avoiding. “We’re all lucky they listened even a little. Doubt they would’ve if they hadn’t been so desperate for you.”

“You managed to guide them when they needed it most, despite themselves,” she grants. “That’s not nothing.”

A flicker of dark humor at one edge of his mouth. “Tough love is a tricky tact to take with a dragon. You’re more liable to end up a pile of blackened bones than you are to make progress.”

“True,” she murmurs, too soft, too open, disturbed to discover the earnest smile on her lips. She resists the inane urge to cover them, flexing her fingers where they grip her chair before they can snap up. She won’t share some moment of relaxed camaraderie with this man, this stranger, refuses to be amused or endeared or interested in his perspective. At the rising of warmth, however tentative, she smothers it. Ruthless with herself, no space for indulgence. “Though I’ve found ravens much more miring to entangle with.”

Jon goes suspiciously still. Frozen rigid in place at her pointed insinuation. She waits patiently, watching him, daring him to meet her challenge or demur. After a lasting moment of debate with himself, he seems to unwind with the resolve he reaches. Sighing out a huff of wearisome air, his tight shoulders dropping, leaning back to rest against his chair from where he’d hunched forward so downcast and guarded. “Aye,” he says hoarsely, “alright.”

A surrender of some sort, something that fascinates her.

Then he looks up, finally locks into her eyes. She swallows hard at what she finds there, but remains impassive, whereas Jon reveals just how beaten down and conflicted he has come to her. “So you know.”

“I know many things,” she prevaricates, wanting him to say it.

“What my brother’s done to us all. You’ve figured it out. The Viper seemed to have, so I assumed you would’ve as well.”

“Your brother?”

“The Three-Eyed Raven of the Old Gods,” he retorts, visibly irritated with her opaqueness now that he’s trying to clear the air between them. “The power that’s been meddling with all our lives, all of us here and gods know who else out in the world. The power that changed history, the last in a long line of competing meddlers messing about with how things were meant to happen in the world.”

“And how were things meant to happen?” she specifies sharply.

“You think I know?” he dismisses. Then reconsiders the quick shrug, elaborates more soberly, “I just know I’ve got a lot to be grateful for from his interference. And I know he’s gone too far.”

Her fleeting bristle soothes away at his reassurance that she had misunderstood his feelings on the matter. That she had thought for one unfathomably horrible moment that he believed that far flung past lifetime had unfolded rightly. But she still prods him, “Invading people’s dreams, looking to control their minds? Too far, you say?”

Another flash of irritation, an obvious refrain from glaring at her, snapping at her. She’s not the only one feeling on edge today. “It’s the raven. The power of it. Or the spirit. Whatever it is, however it works. It’s taken him over. I don’t even recognize my brother trapped in there. The things he’s done, how he makes decisions for us all… That’s not Bran.”

“So I should exempt the Starks from my animosity for the raven?” she surmises slyly, as if baiting him still, ignoring the fact that she had already felt this way.

As many reasons as she holds for wanting to wash her hands of Starks altogether, if not outright make an enemy of them, she resolved years ago that she would separate the raven’s actions from the pack. She should hold them responsible for him only if they protect him when or if Dany finds it necessary to act against the raven. Since she banished him from her mind so searingly under the remembered lemon tree, he has not bothered her again here, and she has not felt it relevant.

The creature, the power, the spirit, it has spared her an unimaginable fate, and for that it garnered more graciousness from her than any other who might ever seek to take her over.

“What animosity do you hold for Starks? They’ve done nothing to you,” he growls, going rigid again, leaning forward again, forearms planted on the table, a bristled wolf.

Dany smiles coolly, tilts her neck. “Still protective of your pack, even after they’ve cast you out. Interesting.”

“They didn’t cast me out. I chose to come.”

“They dethroned you, didn’t they? Rather than follow their king who knows best, they left you to see to their interests on your own, while they turned favor to your sister. Excuse me, your cousin. How is the fair Lady Sansa?”

“Aye, it’d be Queen Sansa now,” he concedes, jaw clenched, angry at her right here in front of him for wielding the turn of events, but also not too happy with those he left behind at home.

“Queen Sansa,” she ruminates. “When you were the one who fought and bled to retake Winterfell in the Stark name. A name you were never permitted to bear, even raised among them, even of their blood. First a shunned bastard then an heir full of king’s blood, dragon’s blood, wolf’s blood, with proven dedication to serving as their shield, and yet still not enough for them.”

“Nobody set out to stab me in the back, since that’s what you’re implying. This is just the way things devolved. I made my choice for my reasons and they made theirs for each their own. There was no coup. Especially not from my sister.”

“Sister? Does she feel that way?” she questions, sincerely surprised. “Now that the truth of your relations is exposed, she still takes you for a brother? Did she ever?”

“What is it you have so particularly against Sansa Stark?” he snaps impatiently. “I was prepared for your ill will against Bran. I’ve learned some of what he’s tried to do to you and I’m sorry for that. But I wasn’t aware you’d acquaintance at all with my sister.”

Imperiously, she evades, “I don’t need acquaintance with her. I know her type. And I’ve heard more than enough.”

Frustration pushes him out of his chair, back to his feet, and she tenses instinctively, but he doesn’t advance or tower threateningly over her, just paces away, an outlet for his restlessness, his fervency. It’s something she understands acutely. Her dragons are rumbling in discontent, still half napping, but he ignores them. After a moment, once he’s rounded the reflecting pool and faced her again, he declares, “I haven’t come here to talk about the Queen in the North.”

“Or her pet raven,” she scorns.

Another frustrated exhale. “He doesn’t do her bidding. He doesn’t do anybody’s but his own. He doesn’t deem to let us in on his designs either. There’s nothing to be done about him now. He helps as he chooses.”

“Oh, there is plenty to be done about him,” she volleys, a purposeful provocation, wanting to see how far he is pushed by a clear threat. If he is willing to burn bridges in defense of his Westerosi family, even the disloyal sister and the insidious brother, if he is willing to jump at the slim chance, she needs to know upfront, before she wastes time with this potential alliance.

Seeming to recognize this tactic for what it is, Jon’s fire fades, growing more solemn, more subdued, studying her intently in a way that makes her skin itch and her heart spike. With renewed caution, he vows, “The raven is done interfering with you. That much, I’d gotten him moved to before leaving Winterfell. And my sister has nothing against you, Your Grace. Her only interest is in an enduring and independent North.”

“Her only interest is in being queen,” she corrects him, pityingly condescending. “She doesn’t much care how or where, Jon Snow.”

“You don’t know her,” he bites back, bristled again, but it passes by as quick as it surged this time. She watches him reconsider her, watches him come to the conclusion to level with her without contrivance on this. “Just because being queen is most important to her doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll make a bad one.”

“Necessarily,” she concedes. The point, if not the person.

“Queendom didn’t fall into your lap, did it?” he challenges. “You wanted it, so you took it. That isn’t condemnation of your reign.”

“If I need give up my crown to save my people from death, I would. So long as I wasn’t handing them over to a worse fate.”

“I believe you.”

“I’m glad,” she deadpans, making it clear his opinion on the matter makes no difference.

“Sansa would too, you know.”

“Do you honestly believe that?”

“I do. If the situation were the same. If there were no better options. She took my crown because the Northern lords gave it to her. If she stood by my choice, they would’ve ripped it from her, the same as me. They were never going to follow me across the sea. Not for a Targaryen queen, not for anything. It’s just their nature. I don’t blame them for it. All I had to offer them were empty promises. It was a slim chance that we could get you back alive. An even slimmer chance I could talk you into helping us.”

“And so now we meander around to the heart of this whole thing. Your true purpose here.”

“That’s not my purpose,” Jon says, persuasive in his flat lack of artifice. Persuasive in the way he stares at her with those dark eyes, rough and soulful.

“No?”

“No.”

“You haven’t come east to plead your powerful aunt for aid?” she mocks, making it blatant how disinclined she is toward this particular approach. “No, you’ve come all this way to help her, a woman you’ve never met, who’s done nothing for you, out of the goodness and charity of your heart. Yes, I should believe you went to such great lengths out of simple familial obligation.”

“We are family, aren’t we? You’re the one that made sure the world knew that fact.” There is a dark edge to him when he mentions it, a bite of resentment aimed her way, which she hadn’t expected. As if he’d rather stayed a Stark bastard than bear the name Aegon Targaryen and all its burdensome gifts. “That’s what family does. Protect each other.”

“We share blood. That does not make us family.”

Dany’s coldness stops him there. It had been building slowly to a crescendo, her ice and ire, but these words surprise them both. Not the thought itself, just the way it is delivered. Raw and profound and ferocious and seemingly unjustified.

They are frozen together, on opposite ends of the garden, the dragons between them, their eyes stuck on each other, struck in a sea of turmoil.

_The lone wolf dies. The pack survives._

After that first foolish thought she’d had when Spice had hit the floor and the White Wolf stood feral over his kill, that thought a woman in love has of her man coming after her when she needs him most, that thought she banished immediately, buried desperately… After that first heartbeat, initial and instinctive and incorrect, of course she assumed King Jon Snow only sailed east to seek audience with the Dragon Queen. Why else would he? There is no other practical motivation.

With the very worst timing, arriving in Meereen to find her taken and her legions rallying for rescue. Perhaps they enticed him, or perhaps it was an opportunistic move on his part, joining up with her avengers to earn credit in her eyes, manipulating her into being more malleable to his eventual treating. This is the tale she told herself. Then she spoke with Oberyn and that protective casing on her heart unraveled just a little. He came east only when he knew she was in trouble. He came east at the cost of his crown and his armies and his family. His motives remain the same, but the propulsions have shifted, and it is difficult to keep things in perspective because of that. It is too tempting to indulge her weakest and most vulnerable self.

Which makes her react more spitefully to him than is wise yet.

Jon looks for a time like he’s considering turning right around and walking out on her, fleeing this entire situation rather than face it and make things worse. Something not in his nature, she knows. Shouldn’t know, but knows. In the end, of course, he doesn’t run. He moves back to her, closing the distance with measured steps. Instead of retaking a chair, he drops to the edge of the reflecting pool, leant forward, elbows on his knees, peering at her with a tired sort of imploring in his eyes that she can’t quite categorize. She suspects he can’t categorize it either.

“Aye,” he says at last, speaking very slowly, very thoughtfully, very sadly, “I guess I know what you mean.”

There is a sustaining silence stretching between them then, nothing in their way but empty air now, just the desert breeze and the draping green tendrils it dances. Dany grows overwhelmed by the earnest intensity of his gaze, so hers drifts above him, lingering over the column of jagged broken stone at his back, where the carvings of the Thirteen once arched. She will have a sculptor come in and create something new, most likely the three heads of her sons. Qarth is of the Dragon Cities now. This garden that had once begun her slaved torment should reflect that triumph. But in the meantime, the torn off stone mirrors the untold damage that keeps Jon Snow and Daenerys Stormborn from whatever potential they may have had in this lifetime.

He doesn’t seem to understand the impossibility of that. He doesn’t seem to accept it. Because when he breaks the silence, it’s only to say, “If you wanna think of it that way, you’re free to. But I didn’t come here for the Dragon Queen. I came because you’re Daenerys Targaryen, sister of my father. You had a sprawling family that you never got the chance to know, so you grew up pretty much alone in the world. I thought a woman like that might be glad to know she’s not the last one.”

“You never knew your true father. And the only brother I was ever sister to was cruel and violent.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t do that.”

“Alright,” he gives in. “I was never without family, and I was pretty privileged, even with the name Snow… But I was always on the outside, looking in. I was the bastard, not the Stark, much as I wanted to be. I was a son, but not really. I was a brother, but not really. I know what it’s like to feel alone in the world. To be an outcast.”

“I’m not alone,” she whispers, words escaping without her notice, argument posed without her decision. But once it is out, she strengthens her voice. “I was once. Utterly alone, very much the outcast. I’m not now.” She pushes her chair out, angling in her seat until her body faces his. “I have no need of your pack, Jon Snow. I’ve built my own.”

 _You offer things that you cannot deliver_ , she thinks, won’t give voice to, because these words don’t belong to her. They are said by a dead woman. A ghost held in memoriam somewhere in her recesses. _Jon Snow, this is what you do. When will you learn? Don’t make promises the world will not let you keep._

“Aye, you’ve your own pack then, fine.” His frustration is returning. “A pack of dragons and snakes and krakens and horses and harpies and butterflies and everything else under the sun. Just no room for wolves, is that it?”

Sharply, “Depends what that wolf has come to my door in search of.”

“I’ve told you—”

“You’ve made excuses and tried to soften me with talk of childhoods and belonging and our connection which has long since become irrelevant.” She is rising now, unable to stay seated, forced onto her feet and lapping the reflective pool to gain distance from him, lest she do something regrettable. Lest he see through her mask to the open wounds beneath, should he keep looking so closely, as he does. “The truth of it is, however you prefer to pretty it up or complicate the issue, that you’ve sailed so far east and been crucial to me retaking my rightful place at the head of this empire I’ve built. And you’ve done this hoping for what in return? An addition to your loving family? Don’t treat me like some simpering girl-child.” She’s rounded the pool by now and he stands to face her levelly as she comes, refusing to give ground against her advance. “You’ve put in your initiative and now you expect what in return? That I should set my children and my armies between your people and the dead? Be their shield against the Long Night? Fight their war for them?”

“ _Fight with us_ ,” he amends. Finally jarring a moment of honesty out of him, working him up so that he forgets his calculations and manipulations, all the ways she’s sure he’d planned to muddy the waters. “Aye, I would ask that. It’s not why I came, not truly, but now that I’m here, how can I not ask?”

“Indeed,” she retorts, distinctly icy. They are standing toe to toe now, her chin tipped up, his hands held oddly behind his back like he’s resisting the urge to grab her and shake her, which would be a highly bad idea on his part. The dragons are already rumbling excitedly at the sparking heat of their exchange. “I appreciate your predicament, Jon Snow, and I am grateful for your actions here. You staked everything you’d gained on this gamble. Save the Dragon Queen and she shall deliver your North to Dawn. I admire you for it, really I do, but it was a bad gamble. I will not go west.”

Jon turns away from her then with a heavy breath, a defeat that shudders through his body, burdening him down, unsurprised but still greatly affected. “Well, that’s your choice, isn’t it? It’s a bad choice, but it’s yours to make. Whatever you think of me, I didn’t come here to force your hand. I would’ve come for you either way, Dany—”

“Don’t call me that!” she snarls, but she’s more wounded than offended, because the sound of it arcs over her like the lash of a whip, breaking open already festered wounds.

“Sorry. It’s just that Queen Daenerys is a mouthful.” He says it easily, unbothered, dropping down again to the lip of the pool. Hardly paying any attention to her now.

_Why would you call me that?_

_Do you remember me? Us? You need to tell me if you remember._

She’s not brave enough to ask out loud.

What she can ask is, “Why?”

That picks his head up, gets him looking back to her. “Why what?”

“Why should I believe you would’ve come regardless? Why would you?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have,” he admits after a poignant moment of scouring his eyes over her expectant face, sounding huskier than before. “I’d like to think I would’ve. Since it was the right thing to do. Since the world is better off with you free. I’d have liked to come for you. It was the honorable thing to do. But the truth is probably something less appealing. I couldn’t even ride south to save my own sisters. I chose a useless oath over my brother Robb when he needed me by his side. So the truth is probably uglier.”

“It always is.”

“Winter has come, Your Grace. The North hasn’t seen the sun in years,” he tells her, empty of all that aggressiveness he’d let her stoke before. Now he is just a tired man again, a soldier who’s seen too many wars, a wolf with nothing to hunt. “For now, the Wall is holding. Every few months, the dead will make another surge. When the wildfire runs out, they will overwhelm our defenses and find a way over.”

That tiredness feels infectious. She takes a steadying breath and finds herself drawn closer in a way she’d resolved to not allow. She sinks to sit beside him on the reflecting pool, vines brushing her arm, her lap. “Yes, I’m well aware of what’s happening in your North.”

“Westeros has one last war to wage. The War for Dawn. The fight for life itself. Whether they know it or not, they need you for that.”

“My dragons, you mean.”

“If this fight isn’t won, it could destroy us all, not just the North. The dead could overwhelm us, then the south, and then what happens? The dead march east.”

“I know,” she murmurs, staring straight ahead. “Which is why it’s up to Westeros to win it.”

“Dorne has pledged itself to our cause. We were treating with the Reach when I left. The King’s Landing Triumvirate refused us.”

“And the Golden Company?”

“Fights for the Triumvirate.”

“I can send an emissary. Convince them to your cause.”

Jon muses miserably, “My brother the Three-Eyed Raven, who supposedly sees all, says we’ll fall to the Night King without your dragons.”

“Your brother the Three-Eyed Raven says a lot of things,” she drawls, extremely caustic. “I have slain his lies myself on occasion. Don’t let his prophecies make you fatalistic.”

“You’re a very vexing woman, you know that? Just when I know what to make of you, you change my mind again.”

Quietly contemplative, she returns, “You’re a very vexing man.”

After awhile, he reflects, “I brought the Free Folk through the Wall, and the Night’s Watch cast me out. I set sail east for the Dragon Queen’s aid, and the North deposed me. I never asked for the bloody crown. Never wanted it. To be honest, I’m glad to be rid of it.”

“You’re not rid of it. The wildlings call you king.”

“Aye, and I’ve tried stopping them. They don’t listen. And they don’t bend any knees. But they’re loyal and they’re grateful and they’re just looking for a safe land to call home. I promised them that.”

“Oh, Jon Snow,” she sighs, shaking her head at him. Her loose mane sways into her face with the motion. Once it had irritated her, but she’s spent so long now doing without the grace of her braids that she pays it no mind. “You must stop making promises you can’t deliver on.”

“You promise freedom to every slave,” he counters quickly, cuttingly, stiffening her spine again. “You’ve failed a time or two at that.”

“I have,” she concedes through her teeth.

“Does it mean you shouldn’t try?”

The ire that flared fades away, begrudgingly softening her. She turns from the path of provoking this man and instead focuses on the greater point. Whatever he chose to say, she would not turn the wildlings out because of their king. “They came to my aid when I had nothing. Of course they are welcome wherever I reside. But I would guess this place is too warm for their temperaments.”

He matches her cautious grin, gruffly assents, “Probably. We’ll see.” Then, “It’s much appreciated. They might not be polished or worldly, but they’re good people. Most of them.”

Dany laughs softly at that, just a breathy huff of humor before she can guard herself against him. Against the connection. She’d hoped it would be dead and gone, slain with her past self, that alternate Daenerys. She’d hoped the spark and tether and draw would never exist here in this present, in this world, between these two new people they’ve been made into. She’d hoped.

Antagonism won’t protect her. They’ve proven that today. It just heats the blood and loosens the tongue and turns their chemistry volatile. Peace is just as dangerous, but for different reasons, deeper. It’s unsafe to be friendly, unwise to be combatants, and what lies between is the immeasurable abyss.

She’d underestimated just what navigating these muddy waters would demand of her.

“Will you tell me what he altered for you?” she requests, gentle with it, purposefully avoiding a command. At his guarded sidelong look, she says a little firmer, “The raven warned Prince Oberyn of the decision that would mean his death. How did he change your path?”

“A few things. Important things.”

Exasperation flares again. While she bites it back, she brushes her silver tangles behind her ears with a long exhale. She catches a tendril of vine as it sways between them, twining it in her fingers, distracting herself. She’s careful to not pluck leaf from stem, careful to treat it tenderly as she touches it.

Jon is watching her.

“It’s what he chose not to change that troubles me most,” he shares with her eventually. Inexplicably. “He’s our brother, and he altered countless lives to restructure the course of history, but he didn’t try to save Robb or even his own parents. When I asked him why, he said their fates were too vital to the influence of other threads. Change them and the whole weaving might collapse. I don’t pretend to understand what he’s playing at. The strands of fate aren’t something I’ve given much thought to. I just don’t get a good feeling that he can make these decisions so easily and the rest of us are just stuck wading through the fallout.”

“What did he change for you?” she asks again, eyes fixed on her hands in her lap, struggling to keep her urgency subdued. She won’t beg him to be honest with her, but she needs to know. She must know. “ _What did he show you, Jon_?”

Perhaps the rawness of her voice revealed too much, because he shifts towards her, reaches for her. His fingers just shy of clasping hers, Dany flinches, heart spiking, sucking in a sharp breath as she wrenches herself off their perch and thrusts forward into the sunlight, a safe distance. She can’t have him touching her. He can’t touch her. Above them, Rhaegal lifts his head and growls in warning.

“Forgive me,” he tosses out, so very carelessly, and he has no idea how much weight that carries. How hollow those words are. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Your Grace.”

“Quiet,” she snaps, shaken. “Just be quiet.”

And he obeys.

With her back held to him still, her spine rigid, her shoulders painfully tightened, her body trembling, she licks her lips and lifts her face toward the bright blue sky and shudders out a broken breath. Her eyes are closed against the sting of the sun, but she feels the wetness of tears on her cheeks and swipes them angrily away. Why should she cry? This force overtaking her is so visceral and uninvited. Sweeping in under the strength of a tidal wave with such little provocation. Unjustified.

_“I have never begged for anything. But I am begging now. Please. Don’t do this.”_

Dany hangs her hands by her sides, fingers flexing into half fists and releasing, trying to throw off this destructive energy.

_“Be with me.”_

_“You’re not like everybody else.”_

_“You will always be my queen.”_

_“I shall show you no mercy.”_

_“Love? How can you say that to me?”_

_“You betrayed me.”_

_“And you slaughtered a city.”_

_“That’s what family does. Protect each other.”_

Ghosts in her head become so loud, she’s tempted for a moment to command her dragons burn the garden, let the fire melt away all that haunts her, let it drown out the echoes. She can’t help herself. She’s weak. Spinning around, urging in quiet desperation, “Do you have memories of me?”

“Not many,” Jon answers after a long pained moment, his expression something she can’t understand, darkened and strangely pitying where one might expect guilt or shame.

“Not many, but not none,” she persists.

“Some. It doesn’t matter now.”

“Doesn’t matter?” she mimics in disbelief, revealing how that wounds her, how it embitters. “No, of course it doesn’t matter to you. Why should it matter to you? You weren’t the one—”

“It doesn’t matter because it’s not real anymore,” he interjects. “It wasn’t a world I ever lived in. Aye, there are a murky few flashes of things no more real to me than a nightmare.” He’s risen as well now, on his feet, agitated. But he makes no attempt to advance on her, for which she’s grateful. “It doesn’t matter because I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for. Obviously. I can tell that from your eyes.”

“My eyes?” she scoffs, still tearing up as anger overtakes her.

“Aye, well, you’re looking at me like I broke your heart, aren’t you? And the way you flinch from me…” He growls out another frustrated breath, ripping his gaze away. “For that, at least, I’ve an idea of why.”

“You remember how it ended then.”

“Remember might be too strong a word for it. I know enough.”

“Why play this game? Why pretend?”

“I pretend nothing,” he bites back, just as furious as she is. “You’re the one that’s—” But whatever he’d meant to say, he cuts himself off a brutal shake of his head, seeming confused for a split second, clenched jaw working against itself. “It makes no difference.”

“No?”

“No,” he growls. He turns from her then, moving to leave, paying no heed to the snap of Rhaegal’s tail where he must cross.

“Jon Snow!” she calls fiercely after him. She takes a sharp step, her body lurching in his direction as if to chase him, desperate and pleading for an awful heartbeat before she swallows it down, angry with herself for that surge of Old Dany that just flashed up to the surface and attempted to wrest the reins from the woman she has become. She’s disgusted with herself, with whatever that was, aggravated with him for inspiring it. With deadly coolness, she warns, “Do not walk away from me.”

He halts himself. Rotates slowly, stiffly, facing her with that same closed off countenance of coarseness. Forcing the words out painstakingly to her, “It doesn’t matter because I’m not him.”

Dany startles at this. Though she shouldn’t, because she’s thought the very same, said the very same, clung to that semantic. “No?” she murmurs powerfully.

Heavy with exhaustion, with tempered aggression, “I’m not him. I’m somebody separate entirely. So I won’t take culpability for his choices. I don’t remember him. From what I’ve been told of him, I’m nothing like him. So I can’t give you what you’re looking for, whatever you’re looking for. Not if you’re looking for it from him. His choices aren’t mine.”

 _His choices aren’t your own, because you wouldn’t choose me to begin with, or because you wouldn’t choose to forsake me?_ Dany wonders.

Instead, there’s no tremor in her voice when she says, “If you know how it ended, my time in Westeros, why would you ever be foolish enough to hope I would revisit that road?”

Jon offers her a grim half grin. “Because I’m just a Northern fool, with nothing left but hope.”

Viserion unfurls from his curled perch along the garden wall and arcs his wings down to the cobblestones. He ducks his head, long neck slithering, until he can brush up against her back, jostling her balance, nosing consolingly at his mother. She lays a hand on his rough hide, stroking his jaw, a surge of love filling her up to the brim from their tethers. Reassured by her children, confidence restored, a balm to all the aches and agonies of old and new.

With a bemused smile, she grants, “You may go, Jon Snow.”

He drops his chin in acknowledgment, steps backward, begins to turn away again. Hesitates. “Blood of my blood,” he vows, catching her off guard again. He can’t possibly mean it the way her Dothraki do, yet it does not seem to her that he is thinking of the name Targaryen.

Perhaps he is not the sole fool among them.

**+**

_**“To defy your own soul…”** _

When she arches onto her toes to kiss him, it’s because she wants to want him. She wants to be the Dany that would take a lover into her bed when she was lonely, use their kisses and their hands on her skin to sate that essential strive for connection. To turn to sensuality to fill up that hollowness inside, that longing for a permanent partner she may rest her heart in safely, that yearning for a soulmate. It was a fleeting balm, but it had always worked to some degree or another. It had kept her from succumbing to her discontent. And with friends and lovers, people so very important to her all around her, people to rely on, to be soothed by, to find myriad satisfactions in, and validations for her purpose in life all around her in the cities she caretakes…

It was enough.

But that was before Qarth.

The Dornishman indulges her ambition for one long savoring moment. It is a good kiss, sweet and soft and slow and wet and instigating, the kind of simmer that would stoke easily enough into something passionate with a bit of cultivation. She intends to do just that, whatever it takes from her now, whatever it takes to feel like herself again, but he wraps his fingers around her wrists and pulls her hands gently from his face. He leans out of her touch, rather than in.

She’s not quite quick enough to mask the flicker of wounded rejection that hits her harder than it would have last year, because Oberyn drawls, “Far be it from me to deny such an exquisite invitation,” and there is so much tender reassurance in his tone where there should be his typical irreverent charm of flirty and filthy. But no, he must pity her now, must see how fragile she has become, because he warmly and ruefully explains, “And yet, I must. This will not mend your ill mood.”

Which leaves her bitter and defeated. She trusts him. She wants to lose herself in him. So many things always came so effortlessly with Prince Oberyn. Who else would she choose to take this necessary next step of her reclaiming with? Who else could she bear?

“Don’t tell me how I feel,” she warns darkly, pulling her wrists from his gentle grasp, moving away from him to sink onto the ornately carved hope chest at the end of her bed. “You know nothing of my mood or what would mend it.”

“If this were about pleasure, I would savor unwrapping you,” he promises, pitching his already raspy voice lower with heated appreciation. She knows if she looked up now, he would be giving her that hungry gaze of his that always felt more affirming than disrespectful. She also knows him well enough to guess he’s putting it on more for her ego’s sake than any organic desire at the moment. His pity is the last thing she wants, so she keeps her face downturned as he continues, “I would carry you to that bed and keep you there for a week at least. Ellaria would have to come drag us out. Join us, more likely. But that is not what you want. And even if it were, you are not ready for it. That much is clear.”

“Is that so?” she scorns, chafed that her wounds are so plain.

Oberyn crosses to her then, stands over her, waiting for her to look up and engage with him. When she refuses, he hooks a careful fingertip under her chin and coaxes her into meeting his eyes. The fingertip trails feather light down her throat until his palm rests on her chest. “I feel your heart racing and your breath is ragged, not in the way it should be, but the opposite. Should a man pay attention, it is painfully simple to see when a woman is forcing herself into something.”

Shame burns in her cheeks. Shame in her weakness, disappointment in the situation, frustration with the way she has changed, irritation at him for refusing to play along. As flattering and ingratiating as he always was, the Dornish prince had never been a sycophant for her. Normally, that is the odd combination that compelled her toward him. Today, it grates on her. Why does he have to be difficult? Why does he have to be noble? She just needs to push through this and it won’t be a problem. Once she is used to it again, she will welcome it again. It won’t scare her or discomfort her, because that is irrational. She just needs to remember. She needs to make herself remember.

Clasping his wrist, Dany holds his hand where it is, presses it firm against her skin, feeling the hammer of her heart beneath it. She strokes her thumb back and forth across his knuckles. This is nice. This is nice and pleasant and a good thing, but it is not easy. She needs it to be easy again. “I am impatient. Won’t you help me with this?”

“Is this about your time here and the control taken from you, or is this about avoiding yourself and the things you don’t want to deal with?” he questions, staying opaque. But at her demanding expression, he adds plainly, “Is this about the wolf?”

A surge of real anger has her shoving his hand away with a scoff. The first real anger she’s felt for him in so long. “You’re less observant than you think you are.”

“Am I?”

“Not everything must be about a man,” Dany drawls patronizingly.

“I merely asked the question,” Oberyn counters lightly.

“It’s true that his presence is bringing up old things in me that I’d rather not deal with on top of everything else right now,” she admits, jaw tight, resisting the impulse to snap to her feet and walk away. “But he is not the problem.”

“That’s good. I’d hate to have been the one to deliver more pain to your door. I wouldn’t have lain the wolf at your feet if I thought his being here would leave you worse than you began. I was prepared for the growing pains your meeting would require of you both, but if I thought it was becoming more than that, I would rid you of the burden of him myself.”

Dany sighs, fire fading away again. She rolls her eyes, says tiredly, “That intractable Winterfell wolf is the least of my worries.”

“If you are not trying to distract yourself from things you don’t want to be feeling for your wayward nephew, and this is only some step to spite your dead and gone conquerors, or prove to yourself that they’ve not affected you, then there is no good reason for this. There is no defeat in taking the time you need to recover well.”

“How will I recover if I will not push myself?” she defies.

“Dany,” he tries sympathetically, but she shakes him off.

“It’s been so long since someone’s touched me because I’ve wanted them to, I can hardly remember the last time it happened. But I know it was with you. I’m sure of that much.”

It must’ve been, him and Ellaria in her bed, because she never took another lover after they left Meereen. It just didn’t feel natural. There was no one that compelled her the way they had. Yara never came east again after that, and when Daario returned, a distance had grown between them so that he no longer belonged in her bed, however much they still cared about each other. He still loved Dany as his queen, but he’d fallen for the Sand Snake girl he’d been so antagonistic with before they went west together. She very much approved, him and Nymeria, so she never called on him again. It must’ve been Oberyn who last touched her this way. The night before he set sail to return to Sunspear, the night he devoted to saying goodbye to her for possibly the last they would ever be permitted to see each other. It was him who last gave this particular luxury to her. Last made her feel wanted and worshipped as a woman.

As a woman. Just a woman.

Not a queen, not a goddess, not a dragon maker.

“It was you,” she whispers earnestly.

He spends a moment studying her before Oberyn chooses to claim the space beside her on the hope chest, hooking an arm under her thighs to corral her up and over, cradling her in his lap, encompassing her in his arms. He says, “That doesn’t mean I’m what you need here in the present,” and she locks her wrists behind his neck, clinging to the Red Viper in a way so vulnerable she never allows anyone else to see.

“Then what do I need?” she challenges.

“That’s one of those things only you will ever be certain of.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. You always think you have all the answers. So go ahead. Advise me.”

“How about this?” he teases, but what he says next, he says soberly. “Let go of the past, my sweet fierce Silver Dragon. You cannot get it back. Don’t try to make things as they were. Nothing will be as it was. Not even you. Accepting that is not admitting defeat. It’s only a sad thing if you make it. Look forward. Be excited for change and all the new possibilities that lay before you now. There is pleasure to be found even in pain. That means there is also happiness to be found beyond any despair.”

_If I look back, I am lost._

That is what she has always told herself, how she has kept on her feet and walking forward. It helped her survive. It urged her ever onward. But it also led to disaster. She must look back a little, or else she risks forgetting where she has come from and what she stands for. If she banishes the past entirely, she risks repeating her mistakes. Yet if she lingers on what was or what could’ve been, she ignores what can be made out of the present and future. The past is important, but it can be an anchor around her ankle, dragging her down into the dark abyss. If she lets the siren song of it lull her to stillness, she drowns. If she is too afraid to look back and face it, she blunders into it all over again.

That is the treacherous balance which trips her. These are the questions which haunt her.

How does she let go of all she has lost without forgetting the lessons she learned through losing?

How does she create happiness here when she still misses what was?

How does she fix herself while she is still breaking?

**+**

_**“Hearts like empty guns…”** _

“I worry about you, Khaleesi.”

“Of course you do, because you’re my brave knight and that’s what you do best. Well, I worry about you,” is her rejoinder, only half teasing, “so we’re on equal footing then.”

Jorah knows her too well to be swayed by the manufactured lightness of her smile, but she tries distracting him anyway. Along the winding path through the bustling bazaar down by the ports, they walk together, taking in the resurgence of city life, the differences. Dany has taken liberty to fold herself against his side, one arm curved across his back, another resting gently over his bandaged middle, encouraging his grasp on her shoulder. She ignores how this still stuns him, leaves him awkward, her tendency toward touch and closeness still something new and marvelous to him after so many years, the change in her still dazing him. He is no longer bedridden from his injuries, but his recovery is gradual and unpleasant and she wants to help him through his strenuous rehabilitation steps. Unfortunately, this leaves her with nowhere to run when he confronts things she wishes to forget.

At his long suffering look, she sighs. “Everything is getting easier with each passing day, I promise this much. That’s for myself. As for my stolen son, I still hold hope. I can feel him now without my collar, Jorah. He is angry and impotent but unharmed.” With a faint impish grin, she adds, “Whatever their plans for him, he has proven as incorrigible for his captors as we’ve known him to be. We will get him back.”

“And what of our other most pressing problem?”

“Which would that be?”

“This wayward son of Winterfell.”

Sighing again, wearily now, “Jorah—”

“He should not be welcomed here, Khaleesi,” he interjects, made stern by his protectiveness of her, his distrust of his fellow countryman in regard to her wellbeing. “I fought beside him to get you back, because it was worth it then, but now you treat him as your honored guest.”

“You’re stretching the situation,” she objects. “Honored? I tolerate his presence in my city and make arrangements for the refugees he brought with him to fight for me. Should I turn them away? What kind of hypocrite would that make me?”

“I understand your feelings for the wildlings. It’s Jon Snow that’s the real trouble.”

“Trouble, indeed,” she drawls absently, almost under her breath, while she scans the vendors and stalls of goods they pass, bursting with shiny trinkets and colorful textiles and lavish fruit bundles and endless vials of spices and potions and paints.

It has taken her so many aborted attempts just to bear the crowd that overwhelms her out on these streets, to endure the din of their noise and the cloying of their smells. It had been so long since she’d stepped onto a street and been among the world, among life bursting at its seams, that she finds it a foreign experience now, something that overwhelms her, scares her back into a cold dark corner to hide away alone. With every day she pushes her limits, she reclaims a little more of her old self, and acclimates back to life.

“After what he did to you, he should be executed. Not given such free rein for plenty opportunity to entrap you all over again.”

“Entrap me?” She’s jerked back to focus by that accusation. “I was never entrapped. Don’t offend me.”

“You were,” he insists, bolder than he usually would dare, pushed by his fervency of feeling on this matter. “You were entrapped, Khaleesi, by that man and by your own heart, gentle and compassionate and yearning above all. He exploited that once and will do it again if given the chance.” His disdain of Jon Snow pales to his concern for her, censure fast becoming the usual helpless imploring. “I know you still care for him, even after he wronged you. It’s a dangerous game you play now, walking this fine line and convincing yourself that you can balance and not fall again.”

“Jorah,” she warns sharply, urging them to a halt, turning to look up at him squarely. “The man you speak of no longer exists. This Jon Snow doesn’t remember—”

“You can’t be certain of that.”

“He no longer exists,” she repeats, harder this time, louder, as if she can will it to be true. “For all the world knows, my long lost nephew crossed several seas to save me from a terrible fate and has been nothing but reasonable since. Should I burn him for that? Explain that I do so because he betrayed me in a dream? Killed me in a dream? Or that time has been altered by an agent of the Old Gods in the Westeros North? They will surely call me Mad Queen then. Or else I let them believe I’m a kinslayer for the sake of a birthright claim to a crown I’ve no interest in? Don’t be absurd, my brave knight,” she says, softening as she goes. “Setting aside what people would say, it is wrong, Jorah. What I do for him, I do for myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“How do I hold him to account for sins he committed in a different world, as a different man, without then also holding myself accountable? How do I punish him and not punish myself, when my crimes were far graver? The Jon Snow from that lifetime, he failed me, he did. A hundred small betrayals that helped me along my road of ruin. But what I did?” she says, and her voice breaks, dropping to a cracked whisper, eyes wet. “What I did was the unforgivable.”

“Those things you told me… That never sounded real to me. That never sounded like the Daenerys I know. All these years to get used to the idea and I still can’t fathom how this miraculous woman standing before me ever could lose herself so absolutely that she decimates a city of innocents for no purpose but to spread terror. That’s not you. That’s not any part of you, my Khaleesi.”

“I would love to have faith in that belief, but I can never give myself the luxury, lest I look away long enough to find myself at the end of that road ever again.”

“I will keep that faith for you then.”

“So you see, though, my dilemma with Jon Snow. If I am to exempt myself from sins of a past life, then I must allow him the same.”

“Let him forgive himself,” he grouses. “You’re not required to forgive him these memories you’re burdened with. And you’re certainly not required to grant him your favor.”

“I know you only defend me, fiercely as always, but you must not think this way moving forward. We can’t afford to. Jon Snow is a new man, for our new world. He is a distant relation that has done me great service, for which I will extend a measure of graciousness. You don’t need to worry about my handling of Jon Snow. I’ve grown far too cynical to be taken advantage of by any sullen pretty face with sweeping proclamations of romance. Besides, he’s shown no sign of that thinking. It’s my first impression he seeks a supportive aunt, not a besotted spinster.”

“He can’t be trusted,” Jorah insists, and she grins at his sudden mulishness. “This isn’t a joke, Khaleesi. I fear you are in very real danger from that man. He’s come back into your life with the worst possible timing for you. With everything you’ve recently endured, how can you be expected to see him clearly?”

“Don’t offend me, Ser Jorah,” she warns again, a gentle chiding this time, no real heat behind it. She slips under his arm, tucking herself back into his side to continue their morning journey. Even as it makes her skin itch, even as it reminds her how very small she actually is, she finds comfort in the familiarity of his frame, big and solid. “I will confess that you may have a point. I do struggle to retain clarity. I do doubt myself and my instincts. But I must go forward without bending to those doubts and the paranoia they lead to. I cannot risk closing myself off again. You know where that once led me.”

“Let your heart be open, Khaleesi,” he murmurs hoarsely, tightening his arm around her shoulders, holding her close the only way she permits him. “But let all us who love you guard it from traitors.”

**+**

_**“Dreams of summer love…”** _

“Will you not allow me to braid your hair?” Missandei asks, just as she asks every day, at the start and at the end. Gently and understanding of the constant rejection but still annoyingly persistent.

“You are relentless, you know that?” she laughs, looking off toward the sunset rays and the shadows they play at the sheer drapes and their embroidery of roses and vines and starbursts along her upper belvedere. She grips the lip of her copper tub until her fingers hurt, but she feels the lightheartedness on her face unfaltering. “Do you nag Grey Worm like this or just your queen?”

“My love knows better to listen the first time.”

“Oh, I see,” she laughs again, tipping her neck back to look up at her friend’s deadpan face where she perches behind her on a stool. She does enjoy the slow strokes of the comb carefully pulled through her long mane, oils slicking the knotted silver strands to combat the dry desert heat and keep it from cracking. She enjoys the pressure on her scalp and the way Missandei cradles sections at a time, working diligently through. She enjoys the submersion into the water, could soak and sleep and savor this for days without ever coming out, how much she’d missed real baths. She enjoys it all, she truly does, and yet it costs her energy to endure. Even as it relaxes her, it costs her. “Let my hair be. I know it’s a mess. What you can do for me is scrub my back.”

Leaning forward into her bent knees, Dany sweeps her hair over one shoulder and bares her back to the woman. This woman that has grown far beyond these menial tasks, yet still insists on playing handmaid to a damaged queen now that she has returned to her side. Prickly but devoted Ornela has come from Meereen to attend her. She’s also kept on many of her faithful attendants who had served her as slaves in the Crowned Chamber, those that chose to remain once she struck off their chains with her own. And yet Missandei insists, so Dany allows herself to appreciate these intimate hours between them at dawn and dusk.

However hard it is for her, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Picking up a sea sponge from the silver tray, Missandei lathers it until it is soft and soapy, then begins with sweeps far too tentative to call scrubbing. Dany sighs under her attention, both pleasured and saddened by her friend’s continued pity. She wraps her arms around her knees and rests her cheek on them, staring off across the warmth of dying light filling her rooms. When the sweeping sponge and rivulets of water fail to ever harshen, she surrenders.

Licks her lips, wonders quietly, “What do they look like?”

Fingertips tracing over the marred expanse of her back prelude Missandei’s kindly, “Some are simply silvery scars, thin crossings I can hardly feel.”

“And the rest?” Dany demands. Won’t expect a generous lie.

“Some haven’t healed as well. Some aren’t finished healing. They are red and mangled. They look like they hurt.”

“They don’t.”

“That’s a relief.”

“They don’t hurt,” she says again, fierce and unflinching, “and they don’t matter.”

“No, they don’t,” Missandei agrees, and the sponge rakes a little stronger down her back. “No one will ever take a whip to you again.”

A good thought, but she must argue, “They might. I thought that after Vaes Dothrak and I was proven wrong. I might fall again. I might meet the end of my enemy’s brutal hands again. I am not invulnerable.”

“Dany,” her friend whispers, and it’s been so long since she’s heard her say that name, it turns her in the tub, water sloshing. It makes her look up into those dark soft eyes and take hold of her delicate hand, interlacing their fingers together.

“They might whip me again. But they will never break me.”

“No, they will not,” she affirms. But then, “Let me braid your hair.”

And Dany laughs again, lighter this time, less conjured. “Relentless.” She teases, “Shame on you,” while she’s shaking off the maudlin moment and climbing from the tub, dripping water all over the floor as she crosses the room without care, barely getting caught by her friend who rushes to toss a drying cloth around her shoulders. As she’s wrapped up and shuffled to the vanity bench, Missandei’s hands ruffling at her as she dries her skin and twists her hair through the cloth to wring out the wetness, Dany keeps laughing, mutters, “Perhaps I should braid your hair. Yours needs it more than mine.”

“Mine is well kept,” Missandei dismisses imperiously.

“And I’ve become feral, is that what you’re saying? My untidiness offends you? Well, you’re lucky I’m getting used to wearing a dress again, or else I’d be running around here naked too. Then they’d truly call me feral. The Mad Dragon Queen, with no braids and no clothes and no shame and no sense. That should frighten my enemies into surrender. She’ll mount her dragons and fly into battle bare as the day she was born. Stormborn. That should teach them a lesson.”

“Are you quite done?” her friend deadpans, but she can see the humor glimmering in her eyes, the faintest pull at her mouth.

“Quite,” Dany quips cutely, bundling up her cocooned sheet and tossing herself negligently across the massive bed she’s yet to get a full night’s use out of, one way or the other. Staring up at the painted ceiling of stars and swirling brights, she muses, “Speak to me of the life I missed. Your life in paradise these years you’ve been gone. Speak to me of your days and your nights. Speak to me of Grey Worm and how you are both somehow still happy and in love. I want to close my eyes and feel that I was there beside you.”

“Even paradise has its hardships,” Missandei warns her, crawling gracefully across the bed to lay down at Dany’s side. “But I will always be grateful for what you’ve given to us, the time you’ve forced on us there, because I have never known such joy and wonder. Because of you, I now know what it is to be bored of happiness. It’s exquisite.”

“Paint me the picture.”

**+**

_**“Echoes that won’t be erased…”** _

“Tell me about the raven’s games.”

“I don’t know his games.”

Dany is colder today than usual, made ungenerous toward him with this expected evasion. “He is your brother. You lived beside him for many years. He rifled in Prince Oberyn’s head. He rifled in mine. Tell me what he’s shown you, Jon Snow.”

Despite this new chance she’s giving him, still he resists. Refuses to be forthcoming, even when it is undeniable there is more to the story. “Shown me? Many things. Many lies. Some truths that ended up invaluable. That doesn’t mean I can guess at his games. Doesn’t mean I know how his mind works. And I won’t help you destroy him. He’s trying to do right by the world. Just because I don’t like the way he goes about it sometimes, it’s not enough to turn against my brother. Until he…”

“Until he what? Until he invades your mind as he did mine? Until he plants an impenetrable imperative inside you that makes you do something you’re loath to? For the greater good, of course,” she mocks scathingly, combative, confrontational, provoking him because he has infuriated her. “When that day comes, you will feel as I do? You will understand the threat he presents? The _violation_.”

“Last we spoke of it, you were content at ceasefire. Has something changed since then? Has he interfered with you again?” Jon challenges.

“Would I know if he had? He’s proven too weak to fight his way through my own mind, but what of those around me?” she poses, turning to catch onto his defensive gaze, to lock him into her own eyes, cool and assessing and clear with her implied accusation.

“You think he sent me?” He shakes his head hard at that thought. “Your Grace, he didn’t want me to come. He said it was too dangerous.” The man takes a step toward her, then another, moving into her space, a dark intense energy about him that feels all too familiar. Too heady. “That you and I, near each other, we were too dangerous.”

“How do I know that is true?” she counters, sounding breathy in a way that embarrasses her, that angers her with herself. Her pulse is pounding now and not from the fire of a fight. “How do I know he hasn’t lied to you? Or you have lied to me?”

“You don’t. I’ve got no evidence to give you.”

“Would you even know?” she wonders, sincerely now, not simply to provoke him. “If he had played in your mind the way he attempted with mine? I fought him off because of the magic I myself am made of, because of my connection to my dragons. Would you be able to? Would you even be aware it was happening?”

“They say your dreams come true. They say you dream and see from your dragon’s eyes. I believe that, because I do the same with my direwolf.” His bronze eyes drop for just a moment to her mouth, then lower, grazing her silk sheltered body, before they lift again and he pins her in place with that remembered smoldering stare. “I would be aware.”

Dany feels herself drawn inexorably by a destructive force, tempting, entrancing, and she steps sharply back from that precipice she’d just been tilting toward. Turns and ascends the dais stairs that raises her war room from the rest of the sprawling solar. Levers a vital distance between them before she dares address him again.

She had assumed that if she were to ever be given the chance to reunite face to face with the man from her dreams, Old Dany and Old Jon Snow, those two ghosts… She had imagined he would be crippled with guilt and shame and regret, just as she had been before her death, that he might not be strong enough to face her. And she would be tearful and anguished and accusing. In her more secret girlish moments, she’d thought he might fall to his knees at the sight of her, devastated and awestruck to have her returned to him alive, horrified by how things had ended.

Perhaps they would both blame each other. Perhaps they would forgive each other. Perhaps he would only be dutiful and pitying. Perhaps she would finally be forced to accept that he had never loved her the way she loved him, so fiercely, so all consumingly, and that he had every right to not feel the same. That she had built up some grand tragic romance in her mind, while the truth of it had never been so fanciful, but something rather mundane, something tentative that was soured before it ever got the chance to grow.

Was that previous Dany too melodramatic in her feelings for him? Had those memories, so biased by the destroyed woman’s own emotion, led her to inflate their importance? Was it simply the circumstances that heightened what she felt for him? Was any of it real?

Irrelevant now. All absolutely irrelevant.

It is a mercy, however much disappointment lingers at the bottom of her heart, to not be faced with the man from her dreams. A mercy to find that he is as dead as the Dany that loved him. She does catch herself on occasion feeling an illogical letdown. When she glimpses him without preparing herself. When he argues and agrees and dismisses her so casually, as if they are mere acquaintances, as if there isn’t a sea of scars between them, the weight of an ocean of hurt and hope burdening down upon them. But that letdown pales in comparison to what would happen if her imaginings were thrust to reality.

 _It is better this way_ , she tells herself. _It is safer. It is sounder. It is for the best._

Anything that tries to protest is merely the ghost she carries.

Knowing she will never again meet that man from her dreams, it should not leave her this hollow.

“The Dornish fleet must return to Sunspear soon. Have you decided your own course yet?”

“I will stay,” he declares strongly. “The Free Folk have already chosen to stay with me.”

“They are faithful. As my freedmen follow me, they will likely chase your tail wherever you go in this world,” she warns him, mildly and now removed from her earlier passion. She is the placid Dragon Queen, no longer impetuous with her fire.

He says, “And I’ll try to do right by them for it.”

“Why do you stay? Why not go home? What will you do? Jon Snow, King Beyond the Wall, or is it Aegon Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne?”

“It’s not Aegon. I’ve no interest in the Iron Throne, even if it still existed.”

“So just King Beyond the Wall. Ruler of the Free Folk, a people with no homeland anymore. You wish a place to settle with them and sovereignty over it? I said they were welcome among my people. I never offered you sovereignty. I would need to take that land from someone else.”

He bristles. “I never asked for that.”

“Have you come to bend the knee then? I doubt that.” She’s mocking icily again. “Bow your head and swear fealty to Daenerys Targaryen? Don’t you know better by now? I’d rather not have it. Your fealty means nothing to me. Even if it did, your promises are worthless.”

“Then let me earn your trust,” he demands, earnest but irritated.

“That’s not possible.”

“I don’t believe that. I can’t. Give me the chance to prove my resolve.” Here now, he grows impassioned, imploring naively, forgetting his vexation, his irked pride. “I will go even farther east for you. I will find Drogon and free him. I will bring your son back to you. I will fight for you and your people. Cut down your enemies.”

Dany swallows hard at his rush of words, his powerful pledges, struggling to remain neutral, remain clearheaded. She cannot afford to be swayed so easily. He has always been better at persuading than he pretends to be. “I’ve an abundance of loyal soldiers. I’ve no need of you.”

“Let me be one of them,” he persists, dogged but not too demanding. “I’ve led armies into battle, I’ve defended against sieges with no hope of survival, and yet ended up with victories despite the odds. I will put in the work. I’ll prove my word when I tell you that I didn’t come here to extort anything from you or put you carelessly in danger, but that I came to build something true with you, as the last of your kin.”

“And then?”

“And then you might feel differently,” he answers, cautious now.

Harshly, “You fight this battle for me here and I take my dragons and my armies and I sail west to defeat your enemy and save your people? At the expense of mine? Again?”

“I’m not asking for a vow. I’m just asking for a chance to change your mind about me.” As he insists it, she watches him tamp down the frustration he feels at her determination to be unaffected by him or his promises, to strike up endless obstacles for him to crash down in his pursuit of reaching her heart, one fashion of it or another.

“Very well, Jon Snow. Go then. Fight for me.”


	10. Chapter 10

**I HEAR THE BELLS  
[chimera chimes]**

**+**

_**“Dissonance of the cognitive kind…”** _

King in the North cometh east.

Only the North deserted him, so he is king from there no longer. No, he has found himself a nomadic ruler, king of his roving wildlings. And yet he still seeks to sway her protection for those that turned on him. He is a better man than she would be. She wonders, if she weren’t so afraid, would anger stand in her way just as well? Would she still forsake them if she could save them without the unbearable cost that came in the last life? Because they had scorned her, she would leave them to their fate? Or would she be magnanimous beyond all expectation, as their so derided Jon Snow has proven, if not for fear?

Perhaps he is not so steadfast to them, despite how poorly they’ve regarded him all his life, because of some unreasonable altruism. Perhaps his so-called honor is a shackle upon him. Perhaps they have raised him as a bastard boy taught to be grateful for the scraps tossed at him, taught that he doesn’t deserve more, doesn’t deserve what the rest of them are owed, those Northern nobles. Those Starks that call him family yet still leave him to feel outcast or second class to them.

She wants to ask him this, might have if he hadn’t proven exasperatingly recalcitrant every time she made any attempt to pry familiarity out of him, to find insight into who this stranger is and what might make him Jon Snow.

He will leave soon, set out to join her generals at the southeastern front, and she’s made no progress with this demystifying she’s tasked herself. From avoidance to pursuit, her pendulum has swung. She is no good at half measures. He has insisted he wants to be family, as if she could ever be merely an indulgent aunt fond of her loyal nephew. He has insisted, and yet whenever she questions him, tries to get to know him, he does his best to evade her interests, ends up bristled if she pushes and irritated with himself for failing to get around her gracefully.

Dany remembers this behavior well. As much a stranger he feels to her, how changed he seems, this trait is a painfully familiar one. He doesn’t like is decisions questioned. He never did. He doesn’t take to it with grace, but defensive fluster. He bristles under it.

She used to as well, but she’s learned it’s best for her own integrity as a ruler for those loyal and trusted to argue her tactics and protest her solutions. If she can be dissuaded, it wasn’t the right course. Otherwise, she is reaffirmed, ever more resolved. A leader unquestioned loses their way too easily. There is a difference between being questioned and being undermined from every side, which she had been in her past life. Her old self’s error had been surrounding herself with the wrong voices.

That’s why she always believed him, despite how unbelievable, when he professed so vehemently that he never wanted to lead anyone, never wanted to be king, nor lord commander. What he wanted never made a difference to their circumstances, but she believed him. As she does now.

What she could never quite tell was whether he bristled because he thought he should be heeded blindly, unreservedly, or the aggravation came from his own inability to express himself the way he wished, frustration stemmed from himself but directed outward instead. She hadn’t a chance to learn which one it was in the past life before everything went sour, though she was inclined toward the former, and it could be the opposite for all she knows in this new life. Despite the familiar moments, he is most fundamentally changed from the man she knew.

Mostly, he seems intent to connect, but is at a loss for how to go about that in practice rather than just theory. Other times, he seems to be stifling the urge to run away.

Dany finds this odd behavior equal parts tiring and puzzling.

**+**

_**“The beast sleeps…”** _

The sound of water lapping at rock. Echoes of an empty chamber. The earth rumbling. Dark and dank. Buried beneath the ground.

Whispers. Whispers in the dark. Demons whispering a cacophony across the distance.

Rage in her veins like fire, burning so intensely for so long, but as the days bleed together and the months stretch on, that intensity dims, dampened by the wear of unending darkness and silence and loneliness and hunger and restlessness and impotence and longing. Mother. She misses her mother. She misses her brothers. With the pointlessness of the rage, she grows sick. And sicker. And sicker. The darkness, the hunger, it gnaws at her worse than anything ever has. She is made weak by the collar around her neck. It sucks at her, sucking at the fire in her veins, sucking at the strength in her bones, sucking out all her marrow and magic. Eventually, she hasn’t even the energy left to be angry. She sinks into the darkness, embraces her cage, sprawling listlessly across the cold jagged stone of her new home.

If she were free, she would breathe and set the world alight. It would burn and it would quake as she cast her shadow over the sky.

Hatred had fueled her at first. The wrath that she would wreak on these sheep who dare confine her. Then time grows long, losing its edges, and her failure overtakes her. It seeps into her skin and drenches her fire and she falls deeper and deeper into that dreaded sleep.

**+**

_**“A pack is whatever you make of it…”** _

In her dreams, Dany drifts ever eastward into the mist.

Some nights, she wakes within a dream and opens Drogon’s eyes, seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels, fire burning in her veins that belongs to his own. Nothing that can be mined for use. His mind is muddied and his world has become murky disorienting darkness. All she can make out is a massive cavern, seawater somewhere perhaps, but a cavern full of gemstones and bones. What she sees, what she feels, none of it can help guide her toward her lost child.

Most nights, it is her own body that wanders the cold dark. Lost. This time, she descends a narrow tunnel of carved steps, down and down into the depths of some unknown hell, a black abyss that sucks at her soul. The stone closes in on her, smaller and smaller with every step she takes, crushingly claustrophobic. The steps end at a vault door. Impassable. When she takes hold of the wheel, it refuses to turn, and it won’t be broken. Beyond the door, somehow she is sure, lies her child.

Disturbed down to the marrow, Dany is driven from her manse when she wakes on the marble floor, driven out through the shadow of the trees toward her children at the edge of the city, so near the Red Waste. They play in the untouched rubble where the House of the Undying once stood towering high, two of them snapping and wrestling and screeching. Hidden away by the copse of black trees fencing the Undying ruins.

Dothraki and Unsullied guard her closely, each claiming the honor of protecting her, after the initial hostilities between their factions as they fought each other for that point of pride, insulting each other’s capabilities for the task, before she forced them to compromise. Two of each, Dothraki to ride beside their Khaleesi, Unsullied to shield their Queen _Mhysa_ , and they must work together, however begrudgingly. They insist on following her wherever she goes, even now, refusing to be dismissed even if it means disobeying her command since her chaining. It could mean execution to disobey their ruler, if she so chose, yet they are unwavering. In the sky, they cannot guard her, but so long as her feet are on the ground, they are determined to never again allow Daenerys Stormborn to slip through their grasps. But today they wait at the treeline when she climbs the rubble hill, keeping her vigilantly within sight while also lending her privacy.

When the dragons first see her, their playfulness sobers, each giving her a mournful cry, swooping low to swarm her, surround her, nuzzling at her for attention.

Viserion especially has been pestering her for things she cannot give. He wants her to ride. They both want to take to the sky with her and search for their brother. Burn their enemies. They won’t go without her, but she feels it’s still too dangerous. Too dangerous to fly deep within the Further East with them before she has answers about the dragonhorn, who truly constructed it, if more exist. And too dangerous to mount her white dragon, her sweet one, her littlest of the three. Much as she yearns to reclaim the sky, to ascend once more back where she was snatched down from and stripped of so much, Viserion is not his brother. She hates the thought of sending them into battle without her, should the time come, but she is worried more about using him the way she does Drogon. Worried it could mean his downfall.

She will not take that risk if she need not.

For the dozenth time lately, she tells him, “No, my love. I’m sorry. I can’t give you that.”

The dragons resume their play, trying to include her best they can without harming her, trying to nettle her into their midst. Eventually, she ends up on a rock, lounged back against Rhaegal’s belly, his green scales rough against her skin, snagging her loosed hair, mussing it. As the sun moves higher over the sky, becoming harsher, he extends a wing over her, shading his mother from the heat and the glare. When Viserion tries to nip demandingly at her, he snaps his tail and snarls at his brother, warning him off his persistence. She quells his harshness with soothing strokes and murmurs, reminding him to be kind, to have patience.

On her way back through the trees that divide them from the inner city, Dany is waylaid by an alluring shadow. A glimpse of white between the shroud of black bark. Rich white fur. Red eyes.

“Hello,” she encourages. But as she turns toward it, the animal emerges and an Unsullied spear slants in front of her, barring her path forward, while Dothraki arakhs swing up. “Stand down,” she commands sharply, stopping their advance. Precise but persistent, she puts her palm to the spear and pushes it aside, her message clear.

A hulking beast, but he slinks in softly, neck held low, nose toward the black soil. Her guards protest, falling on deaf ears because Dany is a little entranced by those unnatural eyes. The incongruity of his timid gentleness, this massive muscled thing that looks so vicious. Like the wilds themselves bottled into a direwolf’s body.

“I remember you,” she murmurs, so quiet her voice gets lost on the dry dust of the wind. “You’re far from home, wolf.”

Holding her hand out takes bravery, just such a slight motion, barely extending her wrist. She’s breathless, waiting, reminded of the many times she’d reached for Drogon in his fury. When he was so spiteful with her that she feared he might sink his teeth in her. She feels like that now, like stretching her hand into a dragon’s maw, even though there’s no sign of anger in this animal. No aggression at all. But perhaps that’s the trap. She almost flinches back when he approaches, when he pushes his muzzle into her palm, so that she strokes his face, fingers sinking into the lush pelt below his ear.

Dany sighs at the soft touch of them coming together, tension that had held her rigid relaxing all too easily. She says, “You must be sweltering in this desert.”

When he finally lifts his head, he is level to her chest. A giant beast to anyone else, but to a mother of monuments, his size is not so intimidating, even as he towers. Her children are as big as buildings and they fail to bully her, so this predator has no chance. But he doesn’t try to intimidate her. He doesn’t bare his teeth. He doesn’t coil to pounce. His fur doesn’t bristle. There’s no rumbling growl thrumming in his ribcage. He is silent and soft and an eerie sadness in his eyes looking out at her pulls Dany deep into the shimmering black well where she has sunk all her old hopes away.

The wolf turns from her, crossing into the trees before pausing to look back at her over his shoulder with a strange sense of imploring. Perhaps it’s imagined, because she has no tether to wild animals beyond her children, so who is she to claim insight to this one? But she has always prevailed when following her instincts, so she steps off the beaten path and lets the wolf lead her through the trees.

Breaking through the copse, she hesitates at the edge of its shadow, watching the wolf cross to the snaking river and its sandstone bank, joining his master’s side. Jon has his back to her, loose tunic tossed to the jagged outcropping he’s leaning on, scooping crystalline water from the flow to splash himself. Scrubbing at his face, wetting his curls, cooling down his burned skin by spilling water down from the cut of his shoulders. The sight freezes her for a long moment, studying the man, absorbing the swell of forgotten familiarity that hits her. The memories she’d never allowed herself to look too closely upon, those more intimate knowings of a life gone.

“Wait here,” she distractedly tells her guards, starting ahead.

Kovarro catches her elbow, earning her attention, arguing sternly, “Khaleesi, no.”

She quirks an imperious eyebrow at that, but the concern in his brown eyes keeps her from bristling under an order. He’s been with her longer than anyone else, excluding Jorah, staggered with her across the Red Waste wen she had nothing, protected her even then, and that lends him much more authority with her than his fellow protectors are allowed. He has grown to act freely with her over all these years, but her time away from them in Qarth has made him even more overprotective than Jorah, and much more belligerent about it than her knight would dare.

Knowing it comes from love, Dany chooses patience over irritation and pats his knuckles where they grip her, an expectant stare enough to make him back down, her stubbornness winning out over his. When he lets go with a begrudging grumble, she repeats, “Wait here.”

It won’t earn her much, she knows. They’ll keep her in sight, keep her near enough to dive the distance and cut down anyone that might prove threatening. But it is a measure enough to allow her illusions.

Advancing without them makes her heart hitch a bit, but she pushes that anxiety aside, refuses to be ruled by it. She’s not afraid of Jon Snow. She will never give him that victory. She believes he won’t hurt her. Mostly. And if he were to try, she’s an excellent dagger sheathed to her thigh, an easy reach through the folds of her flowing silk skirt. Plenty of dirty vicious Sand Snake tricks to defend herself with. She’s confident when she approaches, chin high, hands folded in front of her, features placid.

“Desert heat too much for you, Northman?” she teases.

Jon jerks at her voice, spinning to her, straightening on his feet like a soldier at attention, fingers flexing nervously. “No, Your Grace.”

Brought face to face, it’s Dany’s turn to startle, freezing again at the sight of him, sharper now, jolted by it, her smile dropping, breath catching in her throat. He’s different, this man, different from her memories, different from her dreams. A little older, a little rougher, a lot wearier. His hair is shorn shorter, curlier from not being always tied back. He’s more muscled around the shoulders and arms, like his time on the sea built him bigger, a little thicker and broader than the lean sinewy strength she remembers running her hands over. Less starved. His paleness has tanned darker under the eastern sun. The gouge marks on his back are old scars, but new to her. And yet, where she expects to find a mess of mottled black scar tissue up and down his front, from heart to stomach, there’s nothing but unmarred skin.

“Your scars,” she hears herself say, doesn’t realize she’s reached out until she sees her own hand splaying on the contours bared before her. Fingers pressing at his sternum in shock.

The first time she’s touched him…

Disturbed, Dany yanks her hand back as if he’d burned her. Stung her. Burning never makes her flinch. She’s embarrassed by her thoughtlessness, unnerved by how quick and easy she’d fallen over that dreaded precipice. Shaken deeply. She backpedals unsteadily for just a few steps before recomposing herself, refusing to run. She plants her feet and steels her limbs and lifts her chin. Meets his eyes, those deep dark eyes that watch her so eerily, intent and intense as they search past all her defenses and her masks and her necessary lies.

Sometimes, he seems so imbalanced by her mere presence, knocked off his solid ground and everything he knows just by the thought of her, at rope end with trying to figure out how to react to her. Then there are other times. These times. He seems sure and aware, seeing her all too clearly and withholding all too much, hiding himself from her even as he strips her raw for inspection. These times, these are the hardest for her to bear up under, to beat back the ghost threatening to rise.

“This is one of those things you’ve to be grateful to your brother for then, I suppose,” she says, struggling to regain her cool control, her unaffected aura. She clears her throat and shakes troublesome tresses from her face, rounds him with pointed movement and perches on the outcropping, focusing her gaze on his direwolf so that she can breathe again. “A mutiny at Castle Black, after your decisions at Hardhome. They killed you.”

“Him.” He’s rotated too, still fixed on her, tone flat and uncompromising. “They killed him.”

“This other Jon Snow, alien to yourself, yes,” she responds, faintly mocking. Then she sobers, something sad sitting heavy on her chest that belongs to Old Dany, something meant for Old Jon. “They never killed you, so the Red witch never resurrected you.”

“Bran prevented that.” He moves to pick up his tunic and tug it back into place, rakes his damp curls carelessly out of his eyes. “They still tried, but I’d been warned. It was enough.”

He must have been warned of many things. That would explain why the wildling numbers were so strong now, when they’d once been depleted down to devastated depths after the ambush at Hardhome and the retaking of Winterfell. It would’ve limited the Night King from quite a good surge of his recruitment. Meaning he has less dead to wield and no dragons, which gives the North much better odds. This notion comforts her, assuages some of the guilt she’d been working years at banishing for her choice to remove herself from that particular cyvasse board.

“What would be the purpose there?” she wonders. “For a creature that couldn’t be bothered to prevent the permanent deaths of his other family, why would it matter whether you fell and rose again or never fell at all? That wouldn’t have changed any course, would it?”

“What it did was make me an oathbreaker.” He’s ashamed, yet somewhat grudged about it, tearing his focus from her for the first time, following her gaze to the animal that has dropped down to the bank, hanging over the edge, lapping at the water, white tail swishing slowly in the dust. “I deserted the Night’s Watch and my duty there to retake Winterfell for Sansa.”

“You felt—” She stops, and with a mild roll of her eyes, indulges instead, “He felt that his watch had ended with his death, so he was justified in leaving his post. But what could that have changed but for your personal feelings on the matter? He kept his resurrection secret. To the North, he was always an oathbreaker.”

“Was he?” A flicker of surprise crosses his brooding scowl. “And they still named him king? Deserters from the Night’s Watch get the sword.”

“Rules made up by nobles only apply when they want them to,” she drawls, feeling distanced and steady enough to study him now. She can see the impulse to argue her on that, and then the restraint, biting back whatever he would’ve said, unhappiness blooming as he faces the fact that she’s right.

“I’d thought maybe it was why they withdrew their support from me at the first sign of trouble. Thought maybe it’d have been different if they didn’t look at me like a dishonorable deserter. Nothing better expected from a bastard. I’d just proved them right.”

“And then you weren’t a bastard oathbreaker, but a Targaryen oathbreaker, the Mad King’s grandson, which was far worse to the North,” she surmises.

“Once they knew they couldn’t press it to their advantage, it was only a detractor. They’d prefer I be a Stark bastard.”

Rather than rub his nose in it, she persists, “What was gained from avoiding your first death?”

“You’d have to ask Bran.”

“You never did?” she retorts incredulously.

“Aye, and got riddles for it.” It sounds like dismissal, so he surprises her by taking a seat on the outcropping beside her, one boot propped against rock, arm on his knee, and divulges with dragging reluctance, “While we were working with that High Priestess of yours to nix the dragonhorn so we could go in after you, she said some stuff. I don’t know what of it to believe, but she knew a lot of truths she couldn’t possibly, in a way Bran tends to, and it was her magic that broke through the maze of tricks keeping you out of reach, so I don’t know.”

Dany is staring unabashedly at him now, but he remains faced forward, pretending he can’t feel the weight of her evaluation. Softly, hesitantly, not sure if she wants to know, “What did she say?”

“That the Red witch’s reviving skills left something to be desired,” he answers, sounding hoarser, even more resistant. He really doesn’t want to tell her this, doesn’t want to think on it, yet has for some reason resolved to forthrightness today. “She said… She said when I…” He clears his throat, jaw clenching, exhaling frustratedly through his nose. “That is, when he was revived, he was brought back wrong.”

“Wrong?” she murmurs, torn by that thought.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to think it was something else, something poisoned, not the man she’d loved who failed her so irrevocably?

Wouldn’t it be lovely?

Except that the man she fell in love with was that same resurrected man. As abandoned and betrayed as the ghost inside her feels for him, there is still such a strong part that remains protective of his memory, of the early days of him, as if the man she fell for and the man who abandoned her were two separate entities, bifurcated by that moment they first came ashore in the North, leaving behind the sea and all the love and hope and promise they’d found there.

 _He came back wrong?_ The ghost in her rebels at that thought. There was nothing wrong with the man she met on Dragonstone, nothing lacking, nothing poisoned. There was so very much right with the man she spent those weeks on the sea with. _He couldn’t have come back wrong._

No, the wrongness happened later.

And yet…

And yet…

All the years she’s known her, relied on her, Kinvara’s words have never been caught in error.

They’d spoken occasionally about Melisandre of Asshai, that shrouded figure who played such integral part in Jon’s life and directed Dany’s path straight to him. If she hadn’t prodded Dany into summoning the King in the North to Dragonstone, who is to say where their paths would have led? Would she have ignored the North? Gone to war against them because they refused to bend? Would she have eliminated the Lannisters at the start of her Westeros campaign? Been ill prepared when the Night King devastated the North and marched south?

Melisandre’s words were integral to everything. But her religious advisor warned that the wayward Red witch in Westeros was not to be trusted. Tainted by her choice of tributes. She made herself powerful the easy way, the dark way, by drawing power from innocent sacrifice, burning children, burning the faithless, leeching king’s blood, raising demons, and it twisted the tendrils of gifts from their Lord of Light.

Jon Snow says, “Your priestess swore he lost shards of his soul in the black. Said it was why he revived lackluster. Indecisive. Why he felt so lost. Torn between the wolf and the dragon in him, she said, without enough spirits to embrace either.”

Ah. That was something she could imagine. Poisoned or plagued, she rebelled, but missing pieces of himself? Brought back hollow and stretched thin in opposite directions? Yes, she could see that. She could understand it.

Dany finds herself compelled toward the present, letting the past slip naturally away. “What about you?” she asks, finally turning his head to her, finally luring his eyes back to hers. “She had much to say about _him_. What did she say of _you_?”

“I’ve got my fire back,” he tells her. Roughly quiet and intensive as he conveys it, drawing her so dangerously into that stare. “Her exact words…” He thinks for a moment, recalls, “Dragonfire in my blood, wolf’s howl in my soul.” Then shrugs it off with a deprecating half smirk, “Whatever that means. I don’t put much stock in zealot talk or witch riddles.”

“You put enough into your brother’s to get you this far.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“Most of it was tangible, for starters. Things I could see happening right in front of me, just as he’d said they would. Things I could touch. The rest of it, well, I learned the hard way even Bran’s sight is not infallible. Not everything he tells you can be trusted. It may’ve led me here, but that’s not reason to follow it blindly.”

“That’s a relief,” she murmurs wryly.

“We waited for you,” Jon confesses, suddenly soul baring for just a heartbeat, stunning her. It comes out of nowhere, this rawness, this confrontation of something they’d both shied away from. A heartbeat, then his grim stoicism returns, that guarded caution. “Another of Bran’s claims that proved false. We waited for you. You never came.”

Dany swallows hard, presses her lips firm, inhales sharply through her nose, gathering her resistance, smothering her vulnerability. In a low remorseless tone, she tells him, “Westeros was my destruction in one lifetime already. I’ve no intention of letting it ruin me again.”

“I understand,” he says, and he seems so sincere.

Waiting for a qualifier, she is tense, but it never comes. He just keeps looking at her, holding that promise in his eyes. It eases her nerves. Disarms her own defenses.

Until the explosion of water jolts her off the rock, she doesn’t even realize she’s leaning into him, pulled inexorably. As her heart races and her face flushes, kicking herself for another thoughtless slip, she finds the source of the noise and blinks at the ripples in the river where his wolf had just plunged below.

“Can he swim?”

“Now he can.” At the sidelong look she throws him, he rises and joins her side at the bank edge, staring into its glittery depths. “As long as we spent on ships getting to you, it eventually became a sink or swim situation for us all, Ghost included.”

Faintly, “Oh.”

Jon laughs. Just a brief expulsion of air more than anything, but it is genuine, not bitter or accusing or miserable, but just simple humor. It’s not a sound she’s ever heard. Not in this lifetime. It’s a nice sound, she realizes. Warm and rich and enticing. Strangely uplifted, she grabs hold of his arm to steady herself while removing her boots, bunches her sapphire hued skirt out of the way so she can drop down on the sandstone edge, dangling her legs into the refreshing water. He stands awkwardly for awhile, casting a shadow over her, before finally releasing a tense breath of defeat and following her lead.

“How goes the Free Folk negotiations?” she inquires, once he’s taken a place by her hip, closer than she’d normally be comfortable with. In this inexplicably lighthearted moment, she doesn’t mind.

“Terrible,” he laughingly complains.

The wildlings don’t want to settle in the east. They want what they were promised, a place in the North, to live off the land that resembles their home. They sailed here with Jon Snow to fight for him, how he fought for them, and to take themselves from the equation of the Northern strife, those lords so unwilling to welcome the barbaric tribes they’d battled for millennia against. But they haven’t given up on the North entirely. They still intend to return one day and claim space for themselves. Which is why they won’t negotiate for anything of permanence, complicating matters here greatly.

Under the guidance of Stormborn liaisons she assigned for him, Jon has been frazzled with futility. He tried talks with some of the Free Cities, but nothing went well. Those that would even be receptive to folding such a vast number of refugees into their civilization couldn’t bear up under the burden of the addition, economies and infrastructures already strained by the abolitionist movements. When he can convince one of them, he can’t convince the wildlings, who all bicker and clash on every proposal, endless infighting between the tribes. Eventually, they compromised on the nomadic freedoms the wildlings wanted and focused their goals on the Great Grass Sea.

A spacious land to thrive on, if they’re up for the task, but then there is the Dothraki to contend with. Since she last heard, they were still mired in bartering for a parcel off the khalasar. They came to her for the deciding vote, but Dany refused to just take from one people to deliver to another. She will encourage but will not force her hordes to simply acquiesce. She left them to work it out between themselves, the two collectives and the myriad factions within them, wildling tribes and Dothraki khas, none of which are known to get along.

Jon Snow and his second Tormund have been ramming heads with Khal Qhono and his captains and the Dothraki elders for months now, while she’s been preoccupied by more urgent conflicts.

“Your Dothraki drive hard bargains,” is all he answers when she asks after his progress.

“I would speculate the bulk of your issues comes from your Free Folk and my Dothraki being far too similar to reach agreement.”

“All this could turn out pointless, you know. Depending on how the eastern efforts go.”

“You still intend to take your wildling forces with you?”

“Whether I intend it or not, it’d be happening. They sailed a damn long way for it, didn’t they? The Qarth Siege was a bit of a letdown, in their honest opinions. Your dragons did most of the work, them and the horde. They followed me to fight for me. So if I’m going east again to help your war, that’s their purpose, they’d say. Some of the tribes have opted to stay behind, but I’ll have a decent banner when we meet up with your legions. Every man counts for something, right?”

“That’s right.”

They’re sat together so civilly, watching Ghost paddle gracelessly through the current, barely keeping his head above surface. His master seems more relaxed than she’s seen him since his Qarth arrival, even as they talk of grim things. It eases her coiled disquiet. Almost lets her forget the tangled ruins of their forbidden history.

In moments like these, she could just possibly imagine falling into that previous path. Falling for him, forgiving him, or absolving him of their lost lifetime and starting fresh. But even if he’s not the Jon Snow she dreamed of, for better or worse, even if she’s tempted to salvage some of what she found before and bet on it building to something stronger, how could she? How could she ever trust him enough to shut her eyes and be safe in his arms? Even if she were to want to, were to try, how could she bring herself to risk that?

No, best to keep her heart locked from such things.

“You’ve been gone awhile,” he notes eventually, as if it’d been on the tip of his tongue since he saw her standing by the river, returned to Qarth. “Longer than your own council estimated.”

“The insurrection proved deadlier than I anticipated.”

“I was surprised to hear you’d sailed west at all when you seem so impatient to chase your dragon.”

 _Did you miss me?_ she almost teases. But she knows she’s not ready for that kind of playful recklessness, so she cautions instead, “What are you getting at?”

“Just curious.”

“We’ve no leads yet on Drogon. I was needed in Ghiscar’s territory. It was where I could be effective. No sense strolling around here aimless when I could be of help elsewhere. I hadn’t intended for it to take so long, but the crisis was convoluted and much more severe than initial reports claimed.”

“Tell me?” he requests, so disarmingly uncertain.

On her sea voyage into the Gulf of Grief to handle unrest reported on the Ghiscari island of Ghaen, she had been waylaid. First by Port Yhos, in order to deal with the messy transition of power, because the city had been ruled over by the Ancient Guild of Spicers, who were mightily unhappy with her for killing their King of Spice. Once that was settled and they were pacified, or those unwilling to be pacified were crushed, she set on her way again. A storm in the Ghiscari Strait caused further delay, sweeping them off course and scaring Rhaegal and Viserion back to the mainland, too reminiscent of what happened over the Jade Gates that felled their brother. She couldn’t make her show of force without them, so she had to wait as they gathered their wits and courage past the mindless panic and returned to their mother.

After that, it was just about wading through the carnage. Trying to bring justice to the disorder and atrocity.

What began as simple food riots devolved into genocide. This time, however, it wasn’t as morally clear as slaves she could swoop in and liberate from their shackles, nor execute their victimizers with an easy conscience. No, not near as simple as that. This time, just as so many downtrodden had called upon her before, it was the former masters who built pyres for her patronage. It was their former slaves, now freedmen with agency and real power within the city regimes, who set about trying to eradicate those that had once enslaved them, exploited them, brutalized them, seeking vengeance in blood. Normally, she would’ve ignored any plea coming from those that had constructed empires on the backs of slaves, however forcibly changed their positions in life now, and left them all to settle it amongst their own. But it wasn’t just the masters summoning her. It was their children.

Children of the masters calling for the Dragon Mother.

Vengeance taken in blood from the ones who had actually held the whips and locked the chains, that is something she will always support. For that is justice. What Ghaen had reduced itself to was injustice no better than they’d experienced. Pure extermination of every generation of an entire people. Even the innocents among them. A pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction, so far that it arced and landed where it started, while justice lied in the middle.

It’s all so right and true and plain in her head, easy to understand, but there must be some disconnect between that internal knowledge and her words, because the look on his face is still dark and doubtful, critical of her confident assertions.

“Speak your mind,” she commands, a flare of irritability.

“I thought you crucified the masters of Meereen? Went back on your bargain and slayed them all in Astapor? Burned them in Volantis and Yunkai and more when they refused to kneel? I’m not saying you were wrong exactly to do what you did. It’s just…” He trails off, faltering with a touch of bizarre bewilderment, then shakes his head, tossing aside whatever had tripped him as black curls drop into his eyes before he looks at her. “You deny that?”

“I don’t deny it.”

“Then I’m confused. It doesn’t sound all that different to me. In fact, it sounds like you’re the only one in the world that gets to decide who deserves to be spared.”

“That’s not at all what I’m saying,” she snaps, sharper than she means to be, because it rings too close to something she remembers him saying under a rainfall of ash in a ruined throne room. It tries pulling her back to the day she lost herself, back to the day she razed a city, the day she turned her back on Jon Snow and knew he would now be her enemy. The ghost in her head can’t bear to go back there. Can’t bear to look at those dark buried memories of horror.

“No?”

“No,” she icily insists. “Vengeance and revenge are two different beasts. What was happening in Ghaen was revenge. Cruel and unwarranted because of its indiscriminate wrath. Indiscriminate being the key word. My wrath has never once been indiscriminate, Jon Snow.” She’s still bristled, spine stiff at the insinuations, despite having dealt with them a thousand times before, when they were meant much more maliciously. “I know exactly who I burn and why.”

“Alright,” he placates.

It doesn’t soothe her. “I understand the bitter wrath, I do, and if they were only purging the slavers, there could be latitude to find. But they were burning the children. In my name, they were burning them. As if it were my will. As if I would turn my dragons on children in cold-blooded execution for nothing but the crime of being born into evil.” She swallows down the guilt and anguish from the ghost that rises as she speaks. She refuses to be buckled by it, because that did not happen, not here, not in this lifetime, not ever again. That ghost and her atrocities will never be the true Dany. “The children had no choice,” she says, continues over the crack in her voice, the way it thickens with emotion, “I could not ignore that. I had to stop them. I had to retake the city.”

“I see,” Jon says. No false placation to him now, just a haggardness, clouded and cautious. A bone deep weariness she understands all too well. He’s staring at the blue glimmer of the river again, lost in the past or the future, or lost in his own soul. She’s not sure.

It started with food riots.

There wasn’t enough for everyone. That was the problem. The former masters were used to luxury, to abundance, didn’t know how to ration or share or starve their way through the shortage. They started creating conflicts, wanting more than most got. They were on equal footing with the masses for the first time in centuries and they couldn’t endure it. When they started pushing, the freedmen pushed back. Much harder. They cut their families from the ration lists, deprived them opportunities to earn their shares at all, which made the former masters even angrier. They couldn’t get aid from the city, they couldn’t get jobs to pay for their necessities, and the final straw landed. It was a volatile situation, egged on from all sides.

And the freedmen got what they wanted, what they intended all along to result from the pressure they laid on the fallen highborns, straining them until they snapped and resorted to violence. The one thing the freedmen knew would provide them cover for their goals. They could wipe out the former masters and tell her honestly that they were provoked. That they were justified.

It would’ve worked too. She would’ve been sympathetic to them. Who wouldn’t want revenge for themselves and their families and their ancestors after knowing endless existences of such unimaginable suffering? Certainly their old masters deserved to die. Certainly they deserved to see their abusers dead. She’s killed every man that ever even thought to victimize her, hasn’t she? Because she had the power to do it. Because she birthed dragons and wrested that power to make the rules. She would’ve found a way to pardon them of this breach.

If only they hadn’t gone after the children.

_“Slay the masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man with a whip in his hand. But harm no child. Strike the chains off every slave you see.”_

By the time she reached Ghaen, it was too late for the master caste, not that Dany would ever shed tears over slain slavers, but her legion was able to save most of their children, some of their elderly. Though she knew, even after the clash had been quashed, that they would never be safe in the city again. So she took them with her when she left, these innocent descendants of an evil dominion. The orphans of the masters, and the slave children previously orphaned in the first liberations and revolts as well, commandeering a small voyager fleet from the Ghiscari to carry them, splitting off from her own to sail toward the Bay of Dragons.

A new initiative she’d been considering before her fall in Qarth, the children of slaves and the children of masters growing up side by side as equals, as brothers and sisters, raised to honor liberty.

When she designated the Great Pyramid of Meereen their new home, ordered renovations to accommodate the pyramid’s expected additions, thousands strong, her advisors had balked. They suggested constructing humane workhouses within the lower city instead, to care for them and utilize them, but Dany dismissed this.

“You want to turn your palace into an orphanage?!”

“No. Not an orphanage. A home. My home. They will be my children.”

Her declaration had been cold and hard in its determination when she first dealt with her council, unwilling to have it undermined, and it is so again as she meets Jon’s reaction, too similar for her comfort. He is as incredulous as they had been. She hates that.

But then something changes in him. He absorbs it, ruminates with it, and a ludicrous idea becomes something innovative and awe inspiring and heartening. The cynic in him that looks for some way this could be a selfish political maneuver falls aside. She watches that happen, his head too preoccupied to keep up his guarded expression, and she feels the wary ice around herself melt just a little more. Her hurts soothed just a little more, like a balm to a burn. If she knew what it was to be burned by anything as easy as fire.

Missandei was the only one of her people that hadn’t found her proposal ludicrous, but she had still been stunned. Not that it is outside of her queen’s character, she’d assured, but that it’d have occurred at all. And then she was stunned again, after Dany had explained what she’d come to propose to her. That she would trust very few with a task this important, and could think of no other better suited for it than Missandei of Naath. The last thing she wanted to do was send her best friend away again so soon after reuniting, while she still needed her so intimately, but she felt this was the right choice.

Sending Missandei to Meereen to oversee the induction of her new children into the Great Pyramid, to oversee the essentials and the vast caregivers they will need, the tenders and the healers and the teachers, to create the school they will need within the pyramid, to defend them fiercely against any Meereenese that might object to their welcoming. And most importantly to play mediator between the children themselves, all those who would surely clash, raised to believe they were above the other, raised to view the other as subhuman.

If she hadn’t known already it was the right choice, she would’ve by watching the woman’s spiraling reactions, watching how she warmed to it so quickly. First came the denials of course, the vehement refusal to be parted so soon, even anger at the suggestion, to return to Meereen of all places without Dany, leaving her here to face a missing dragon and an enemy empire and a swamp of fresh emotional scars. But the seed was planted and it blossomed in her mind before Dany’s eyes. Excitement at the prospect, brimming with bright ideas, glowing with joy at the thought of this new adventure to undertake. This challenging nurturing.

And where Missandei goes, Grey Worm follows, so Dany must do without her Unsullied commander once more as well. But it is worth it. It is more important to have them there, with that purpose, than here by her side. However much she wants them here.

“You’re not at all what I expected,” Jon roughly confesses. She turns back to him, startled to find him staring at her, searching into the deep of her secrets. How his bronze eyes fixed on her can be both beseeching and belligerent at the same time, she marvels. “Everybody talked so much about you. Bran thought he knew everything, but you’re nothing like how he described you. And then Prince Oberyn came and his impression of you was completely contradictory. He’s a little in love with you, I think.”

With a surprised burst of laughter, Dany corrects, “No, he’s not.”

Clearly unconvinced, “Why else would a man—”

“Because the Red Viper of Dorne is unlike other men,” she interjects, too amused, too delighted to let him carry on. “Whatever he may’ve done on my behalf, whatever he’s said, it’s not remotely due to romance. The only person Oberyn is truly in love with is his Ellaria Sand.”

“If they were in love, they wouldn’t bring other people into their beds the way they do,” he argues, blushing but pretending he’s not bashful at this topic. “How could they?”

“The sensual and the romantic are distinct for some people.” She grins a little wickedly at him, adding, “Especially the Dornish.”

“I don’t understand that,” Jon admits, looking intently at her now in a strange stifling way that banishes her grin, thickens her throat, picks up her heart. “If I loved a woman, I wouldn’t want anybody else.”

Dany swallows hard.

It’s a good diversion from her darkened mood, a fleeting uplift from the discussion that weighed her down, but it becomes too dangerous as soon as she realizes his scarred palm has found its way to her wrist, rough pad of his thumb stroking softly over her galloping pulse point, his eyes never straying from hers. Far too dangerous a diversion.

“Who else put thoughts of me in your head?”

“Who didn’t? Everybody has something to say about you, don’t they? They love you, or they despise you. They worship you, or they are terrorized by the shadow of you. Everybody thinks they know what you are and they’re eager to convince the rest of us. It’s hard to figure out the truth of it in such a tangled mess of mythos.”

“Are you learning at least? Now that you can see for yourself.”

“I’m learning,” he carefully concedes, concentrating on something across the river to evade her interrogating stare.

Dany sweeps her unruly silver mane over one shoulder, baring her nape to a splash of cool water as she says, deceptively casual, “I’m learning too, Jon Snow.”

“So what did you do to them?”

“Who?”

“The freedmen that were killing masters. You said you took the little strays with you and ended the unrest. What did you do to them?”

Her mood darkens at this reminder. She levels him with a queenly look, challenges, “What do you think I did?”

“I would’ve killed them,” he counters unflinchingly, unintimidated by her coldness. “I would’ve had to. The precedent it would’ve set, letting them get away with it, could’ve made everything else crumble.” He’s thinking it over deeply, then rethinking, eventually nodding to himself in confirmation. “But I would’ve given them deaths quick and clean. I wouldn’t have crucified them.”

She jerks at that, blanching as it hits her, but she can’t tell if it’s the accusation or the implication itself that disturbs her most. “I didn’t crucify them,” she answers, rushed and fierce, needing to shake the very thought away. “You think that of me? You think that was some power trip I resort to whenever the impulse strikes? Is that what people think of what I did to the Meereenese masters?”

“I don’t know,” Jon says softly, no edge in his expression, just as always a somber seeking.

“I crucified the masters as a message to the world. I gave to them what they gave to their slaves. To warn me off my march up Slaver’s Bay, they took their slave children and crucified them to posts on the road.” She falters, shaken, licks her lips, breathes in. “Because of me.” Breathes out again. Impassioned, telling him, “One hundred and sixty-three crucified children lined my path to Meereen. All these years now, I can still picture their sallow faces. I still see them in my dreams, rotting there in the sun, hardly more than bones. We pulled them down and I ordered the masters up to take their place, because I needed the world to know what would happen to evil who thought to wield the innocent to shield themselves from me. I needed the world to feel fear, so that they might stop and think before committing such atrocity, might in fact think: _If I do this to them, she might do this to me_. They would realize how the horror they chose to visit upon the innocent would be visited back on them. I’d hoped that would be enough to protect people.”

The silence that trails her hushed fervent proclamation settles heavy upon them, loaded and awkward and deeply uneasy. Until he offers suddenly, “I’m sorry.” And he sounds so heartfelt, it jars her. “I didn’t know the whole story.” But then he unnerves her even more by seeing right through her and stating strongly, “I’m sorry you have to live with the guilt of those children’s fates. You didn’t do that to them. And it’s unfair.”

Which is the last thing she expected to hear from Jon Snow.

“There’s many stories you don’t know the whole of,” she points out, softer now, mollified, even strangely shy. “Just like there’s many stories I only know rumor of. Stories I’d like to hear.”

“I’m trying,” he tells her, seeming pained.

“I understand.” Though she’s not sure she does, because as much kinship as she feels for him, as much empathy for their similar yet vastly different situations in this new world, there’s still that ever present doubt like an insidious darkling inside, warning her that she’s a fool to trust him. Fool to take anything he presents her at face value. It’s poison, that voice, and she can’t give into it.

So she focuses on less overwhelming mountains to climb. She bends and cards her fingers through the flowing river, splashing a little at him to diffuse the tension, to break the intensity. She talks more about Ghaen, talks of new resolutions.

To prevent powder kegs like Ghaen from exploding again, she resolves to pay greater attention to keeping the Dragon Cities fed. Her first step to that is to send emissaries to each of them with the sole purpose of investigating the truth of things on the ground, despite what reports from the top may make their own claims to her. If there are people being left behind, being ignored, being starved in favor of another, unrest rising, she’s tasked the Stormborn councils with addressing it before it can breed and culminate into another violent eruption. Stricter regulation and enforcement of the various trade pacts between Cities, those flourishing forced to lend support to those still suffering from change. She’s been warned it will lead to more resentment, more bristling under her bridle, and jealousies of those territories outside of her purview, those unconquered or gifted independence. But that will be necessary collateral to avoiding a crisis like the Ghaen Extermination again.

Returned from that terrible island, she only faced more pushback in Qarth, bloomed in her absence. She gets no rest, rushed right to quashing resentful protests from the Pureborn caste who have ruled here for so long and are now leveled to the commoner. Those who built their entire culture on the fact that they were better than the people they walked on simply by some imagined supremacy in their bloodstream.

“They should still be groveling in thanks to you for gifting them their lives,” Grey Worm had growled, offended and still very much vicious toward the people that spent eleven months castigating his queen, reveling in her subjugation. When they’d taken the city and set her free, he’d wanted to line every last one of them up and slit their throats. He’d wanted deliverance. And she’d wanted that as well, deeply, truly, so very passionately. Yet she denied herself the catharsis, forced temperance to her own bloodlust and that of all her loyal killers.

“Weak leeches,” Kovarro had sneered.

“Worthless Milk Men,” Qhono had dismissed.

“They forget too soon,” Grey Worm had explained, “what they did to our queen and the horrors she should have visited upon them in justice.”

“They forget only because you work so graciously to rebuild their city after the topple,” Jorah had soothed her. “It leads them to believe they can take advantage.”

“And we must teach them,” Kovarro had rallied, his men woofing and baying for slaughter behind him. “Again, again, until they learn.”

“Teach them, we must,” Dany had interceded, a cooler head calming their stoking fervor. “But not with our blades.”

“Burn them,” Qhono had goaded.

Dany had laughed. “No. We’re not quite to that resort yet.”

Diplomacy has never served her well. Finding peaceful compromise has never rewarded her or her people. She keeps trying, but it is unlikely. When she takes what she wants by force, she is victorious. When she is who she is, a dragon, a Targaryen. When she tries to play peacemaker and appease, it devolves into chaos and loss. Daario Naharis was right from the beginning. She’s a conqueror. She’s lousy at politics. Probably because moving politicians gently around the board comes with the prerequisite acceptance of the way things already work, and she chafes at the bridle of the old world order. No, she’s a failure as a diplomat, which is why it’s so important she surrounds herself with better minds than hers.

And so she’s undertaken yet another impossible feat of patience, struggling against the pride and superiority of a whole caste bred with inherent cruelty and entitlement. But the Pureborn are not a true threat, so lacking now without their wealth and army. It’s the warlocks of Qarth that truly worry her.

With the crumbling of the House of the Undying, the lowly warlocks who dwelled there were displaced. Those that did not devote themselves to her were only those that slipped away in the night and ran fast enough to escape her wrath. But that means little to her peace of mind. Warlocks can never be trusted, especially the Qartheen kind. As Qarth says, _A warlock’s house is built of bones and lies_.

Warlock’s Way lies west of the Undying House ruins, a street with windowless homes where the remnant warlocks hide. She’s destroyed their monument to the Undying Ones, those leaders of theirs she had previously killed, and now she has taken over all their remaining places of power. The rectory where she studies all the texts and tomes and trinkets they hoard. The Temple of Memory, west of Warlock’s Way, a sacred place of sacrifice, which she’d emptied out and commandeered for more practical purposes. She’s aware that it’s unwise to provoke them this way, nor will she placate them, but she finds herself reluctant to rid herself of them root and stem, which she knows is a mistake. They had some hand in her fall, in her and her son’s ensnarement, though she’s yet to confirm the specifics. They will die before they can move against her again, but she needs to learn the truth. She needs answers.

Few answers can be wrested from ghosts.

Despite how indispensable High Priestess Kinvara proved in breaking her cage and freeing her children from the dragonhorn, she has been less so in the aftermath. Dany asks her where Drogon has gone, who has taken him, and the Red witch says she is blinded. Dany asks her who wove the magic that made the dragonhorn, and she murmurs incoherently about tigers and catacombs and Old Ones before giving up and admitting she cannot say. Dany asks her which of the Qarth warlocks lent their talent to this only half unraveled conspiracy, and she claims that the tonics they drink so much of cast shrouds over their minds, protecting them from her eerie Red sight. The only advice she can give is _east_. To go _east_.

Dany isn’t ready for that yet.

Within the city she’s claimed for her own, to the west of the rubble is the rest of the warlocks, but to the east is neighboring new friends. There was no room within the inner city to offer the wildlings, not even room for her khalasar, so they constructed settlements wherever they chose to stake. The Dothraki preferred the north side of the outer city, but the wildlings claimed this river. As the river winds, a vast snaking of encampments now follow along its banks. It started with shoddy tents, hardly fit enough for five men apiece, but as trading and haggling and a little light thieving got going, it evolved into a tent town, acres of interconnected textiles, richer and prettier than anything the wildlings brought along.

She can just barely see them from this secluded spot, down a ways, washing clothes in the water and fishing and swimming and fighting, and the raucous laughter diffuses Jon and Dany’s pensive quiet every so often. It makes her smile, relaxed and wistful. Perhaps hopeful.

“Fire for my enemies, freedom for my friends,” she recites.

“Aye,” he agrees. “That about sums it up.”

The Kingmaker. The Queen of Kings. The Great Khaleesi of all Khals. The Mother of Dragons. There’s no escaping these titles. Her monikers earned by fire and blood and determination. However profoundly she longs for peace, the dynamics of power will always drag her back to violence. Because there will always be evil left in the world who refuse to respond to anything else. Great change requires great sacrifice. The path to peace is paved by violence. It’s an inescapable reality.

When she tells Jon this, he gets another dark look, most likely troubled by her philosophies, but he doesn’t contradict it. “What started you on this road anyway?”

“I wanted to use the privilege I was born with to help those that suffered as I have,” she says, “and suffered worse than I’ve ever. Really, I was sold into it. I didn’t form an ambition and set out to attain it, so much as all this just … found me.”

“How so?”

“I tried to help slaves in Lhazar by claiming them for my own, working within what little power I had as Khal Drogo’s wife. Not for some moral authority I already held. Because I walked through a village being pillaged and burned, and I saw the women being raped, and I just reacted. That decision got my husband killed. Trying to save my husband, and in extension myself, that cost me the life of my first child, Rhaego. And the ability to ever bear human children in the future.” She says this simply, unemotionally, breezing right by it and refusing to look at his face for reaction. “That led to my dragons. As my dragons grew, I went through the motions of what had been ingrained in me from birth, that the Iron Throne had been stolen from our family and a Targaryen needed to rise up and take it back. Which led me to Astapor, intending to buy myself an army of slave soldiers.”

“You weren’t always against it then.”

“It was an evil I tried to turn my head from. I’d been a slave of some form all my life. What could I change? When I got there, when I saw what it was like, I realized I didn’t want an enslaved army. I wanted them to follow me like the ragtag khalasar who crossed the Red Waste with me, starving and dying of thirst and running from the Dothraki that wanted to wipe us out. Because they believed in me. Because they loved me. Because they trusted that I would lead them into a better world, a better life, a safe and happy place. That it would all be worth it in the end, if they took the chance and risked it all for a leap of faith. For a foolish little girl who had nothing but a burdensome name and by some unexplainable magic had birthed dragons back from extinction.”

“So you sacked Astapor and the Unsullied rewarded you with their loyalty. It wasn’t much of a risk. How likely were they to withhold their devotion from the woman that liberated them?”

“That’s what I was thinking,” she admits. “I won’t deny that it was a calculated move. At the same time, though, I genuinely wanted to free them. To end the horrors. Somewhere along my march up Slaver’s Bay, saving them became more important than any House Targaryen restoration.”

She says _somewhere_ , as if it were a nebulous thing, but she knows the moment it happened. She knows it was in the dirt outside Yunkai, dark dirty hands reaching desperately out to her, anguished and exulted and disbelieving voices creating a cacophony of _Mhysa_. They couldn’t believe she was real. They couldn’t believe she came for them. They couldn’t believe somebody finally made them matter. It broke her heart and pieced it back together again, reshaped it into something new.

“You started out this legacy of yours from selfishness, then got sucked into it so deep, you forgot who you were when it started,” he says, and it’s clear he’s not talking about Dany.

“Perhaps I did.”

“It’s a noble cause, yours is,” he gives her, but follows it with a depressing, “The kind of cause you’ll never win. It’ll never be over. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“I admire you for that. I don’t think I could be what you are. I’m so sick and tired of war.”

“Every time I try to break free of it, it clutches me once more.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m starting to understand… It’s not something I’ll ever get a reprieve from, or reach an end to, and I brought it on myself, because I made this choice again and again, to lead this life, to be this person. It’s an exchange. They call me queen, mhysa, and I keep fighting. They give me power, and I use it to protect them, to remake the world. I had dreamed of the day I would be finished, as if I could ever complete my task and settle down in the aftermath with a home and family and a crown. That was a girl’s fantasy. Now I understand that I’ll never be done. I understand that I need to live for the times in between battle. I need to seize the soft moments and appreciate the peace before I’m called back to war. And that has to be enough, because even if I never get to escape the fighting, some of them do.”

“They get peace because we fight,” Jon says.

Dany smiles at him. He seems so resigned to that fact, so beaten down and exhausted by it, but she sees the beauty in it now, where she hadn’t been able to before. “This is the choice we make. To pick up the sword. To hatch the dragons.”

“You ever consider deciding different?”

There’s something in his gaze when he asks the question, something that summons some frozen white waterfall in her mind, a fierce longing blooming in her chest beside that old ache. Just like war, every time she thinks she’s escaped it, she’s caught up in it all over again. “Every day,” she whispers to him, as unguarded as she’s ever allowed herself to be in his presence.

His restrained grin is distinctly fond, admiring in a way that warms her body under the desert sun like she’s standing in a fire after swimming a lake of ice. “But you never will.”

“No, I don’t think so,” she concedes, voice still hushed. And then she’s leaning in again, pulled into him, surrendering to this undeniable yearning. The world just keeps falling away from them and they just keep forgetting it. Forgetting everything.

The blow is equal parts relief and hurt when he’s the one to resist. Gratitude and rejection panging inside her when he’s the one that turns his head before they can touch. A frown sobering his face again, an awkward clearing of his throat, the restless way he scratches at his beard then rakes through his dried curls. It leaves her at a loss, tightening with humiliation, wanting to disappear. Wanting to kick herself for being so stupid. So weak. She knows better than this. She knows better than to feel these things. Especially to succumb to them so easily. She’d worked so hard for so long to recover from the scars of that dead woman she’d never really been, worked to rebuild herself into a better woman, a stronger one. She’d thought she’d made such progress. And now look at her. Just as pathetic as Old Dany had been. Just as fragile.

It’s an unforgiving transition, the lighthearted promise of her mood a moment ago to that of wounded self-disgust. A naive lovesick fool, she’d called that ghost so many times, buried her deep. But she is never really left behind, is she?

Before she can shove to her feet and wedge space between them as discreetly as possible, would just walk away if she could salvage her pride from that move, Ghost scrabbles out of the river to distract them. He shakes off his fur, splattering them so that they cringe and laugh together. Rather than return to his master’s side, he settles into the dust, pressing at Dany’s hip, dampening her dress. Even as she straightens in stilted surprise, he lays his heavy head on her lap, a shuddery exhale puffing through his wet nose. Her hands have lifted to the air with her uncertainty, and she sends Jon a puzzled look, but all he does is shrug, at the same loss she is.

Despite the unlikeliness, it reminds her of the intuitiveness of her dragons and how they prod at her in diversion and comfort when they feel her end of the tether become needy and tumultuous.

With a surrendering sigh, she forces herself to relax. Another glance to Jon, she drops her hands, sinks them in his plush sodden pelt, the grit of sand sticking between her fingers. The sting of Jon’s rejection soothes away and allows her room to breathe in the relief, her baser emotional self accepting the intellectual sense she’s held close since he first thrust his sword through the Spice King and stepped over his corpse to get to her. It’s for the best, she knows it is, but must bitterly remind her. Endlessly, apparently.

“Why have you come to me, Jon Snow?”

“I told you—”

“You wanted to help your long lost aunt, yes, I heard you. You wanted to help on the chance that you could gain a powerful ally in your war. Now you stay because you think you can earn my aid in exchange. All this…” She hesitates, considering her words. “However sound your logic on the surface might be, all this seems counterintuitive if your true purpose is saving the North.” Fingers furling in the wolf’s fur, a tight grip that brings her inexplicable comfort, as does the weight of him pressing her down, the beat of his heart and his life warmth. She persists, “Why are you here, Jon Snow? Why are you here in the east, where there’s nothing for you, when you belong in the North, with everything that’s important.”

“There’s nothing for me back there,” he confesses, voice low and strained, scraped raw. Stunning her.

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“You wouldn’t still be so protective of them if it were.”

“It is, Dany, you don’t know,” he grinds out. Won’t look at her. He’s focused on the horizon, jaw clenched, hands squeezing and scratching at the sandstone edge of the artificial bank. He’s restless and rigid, coiled tight enough to snap.

She knows she should be gentle to avoid that, but her own frustration bleeds out. “Because you won’t tell me. Anything. You don’t talk.”

“What is it you wanna hear?”

“I don’t know, Jon. I don’t know. You say you want to be family, yet you refuse to reveal yourself. How do I build a foundation with a stranger?”

“I’m trying.”

“So you keep saying.”

“What do you wanna hear?” he asks again, as frustrated as she is, as flustered, as disconcerted. They don’t know what they want from each other. They don’t know the right questions or the right answers or the right words that would satisfy the frustration. They don’t know how to navigate any of this.

In the loaded silence that follows, the expectant beat, impulse gets the best of her restraint. “Tell me. Tell me what you remember of me.”

“Nothing,” he lies. Clearly lies. His sudden surge in aggravation gives him away, his angry desperation for her to believe him and leave it be. He tries to thrust to his feet to escape her, but she latches onto his forearm before he can rise. It’s a strong grip, a demanding one, but he could easily break free of her, yet he freezes. There’s that buried imploring in his eyes again, pleading her to not push on this particular raw nerve. Calmer, softer, he insists, “Nothing, Your Grace.”

She recognizes that rawness, has felt it for so long. What she must wonder if it’s because he’s lying to her or lying to himself.

As he settles back to stillness, body no longer coiled to run, she lets go of his arm, fingers sinking back into Ghost’s pelt for comfort. Weariness blankets her again, realizing she’s still not getting anywhere with this yet, so she chooses pity for him and abandons her stubbornness. She moves her thoughts to more practical topics.

Dany sighs. “Then tell me how it is you intend to go about fulfilling your bold pledges. What was it you said? Cut down my enemies and return my son to me.”

“I’m joining your field generals soon at the South Bone Peninsula. Far as cutting down your enemies goes, I’ll follow their lead for that. For your dragon… That’s trickier, isn’t it? I’ve every intention of coming through for you. But I need light for that. We’ve been canvassing every potential your High Priestess and your Dragon Eyes feed us, but we need solid information. To get that, we need to infiltrate behind enemy lines. Your Dragon Eyes are devoted, surely, but they’re mostly just civilians. What we need is a true spy. One who knows where to look.”

“You should’ve brought your sister along.” It escapes her before she realizes it’s a lie. It’s hard enough to extend trust to Jon. If that bloodthirsty Faceless Man had come, she never would’ve welcomed them here, Jon and his sister. She would’ve turned them right around and sent them back. The anxiety of having Jon in her city is more than psychologically exhausting. Either of his sisters would break her composure, shatter her into a spell of paranoia. To soften up, she quips, “Where’s the girl who wears many faces when you need her?”

“Dead,” he answers.

The brusque revelation jars her from her thoughts, a wash of new understanding, a faint twinge of guilt. That’s why he was willing to leave the North, why it’s so easy for him to be here on the other side of the world, away from his family. The only one of them who treated him like a real brother is gone.

“How?” she ventures.

“Went down to King’s Landing during the mess of it all.” He swallows, wresting his voice back from repressed grief. “She wanted to be the one to kill Cersei Lannister. It wasn’t good enough that she’d die. Arya wanted to be the one. She got what she wanted. She just didn’t make it out alive.”

Smothering her own sentiments, she’s bold enough to invite another rejection, places a tentative hand atop his own where it’s gripping the edge to the point of pain, her sympathetic touch against the harshness of his knuckles. She expects him to shake her off and growl something ugly or irritable to throw the defensive wall up again between them. Instead, he surprises her, unbalances her, twisting his wrist, flipping his hand, burnt scar of his palm pressing at her callouses, fingers sliding between her own. It’s not a gentle touch. It’s a lifeline. His fingertips dig into her knuckles like they’d been digging to the sandstone, painfully, desperately.

She thought her most difficult task would be stomaching the discomfort of having him close, the remembered fear and betrayal and trauma of the last lifetime. She thought she’d endure it with dignity and be gracious enough to make an effort at polite tolerance, or at the very most find interest in having a relative. She didn’t think she’d be so influenced by the ghost’s fossilized emotions.

“Did your brother tell you who it was that killed the Night King, in our last life?”

“He did.”

There’s really nothing else to say.

After awhile, the sun and silence grow an easiness around them that seems to sink his grief down again where he keeps it buried. It’s almost nice until the dull beat of wings whip up the wind. Her hair rustles wildly and dust rakes stingingly over them, leaving them both coughing, shielding their eyes, before Rhaegal lands on the opposite bank, a tremor rippling through the ground at impact. She can feel the jealousy thrumming in his tether before it becomes clear by the way he curves his wings and drives his spine tips into the bank for perch, shoulders hunching, neck snaking low, baring his daggered teeth with a disdainful snarl. At the same time, Ghost picks his head up from Dany’s lap, his quiet growl of warning vibrating in her thighs. The whole scenario makes her both greatly amused and extremely worried.

“ _Be kind, my love_ ,” she commands, a stern chide in High Valyrian.

Jon just laughs, scrubbing sand out of his eyes. “They’ve had a rocky relationship, those two.”

“They know each other?” She’s surprised.

“When I was coaxing them out of the Painted Mountains, Ghost wouldn’t let me go up alone. Dragons don’t much like wolves.”

“They’re about the right size for lunch, but much more trouble,” she drawls, sharing a grin with him as the beasts still stand off, bristled, territorial. “A dominance match I’ve no interest in witnessing.”

“Ghost, to me,” Jon barks, and the wolf shuffles grudgingly around Dany to drop on his haunches at his master’s side, red eyes unwavering from the dragon above.

Dany rolls her eyes. Sharply in Valyrian, “ _Rhaegal, enough. Fly. Return to your brother_.”

At first, he ignores her, fixed on Jon and Ghost, preoccupied with his mulish determination to frighten. The fact that the wolf refuses to tremble infuriates her green child. But then Ghost concedes, dropping his gaze, nose dipping into Jon’s palm. It’s just enough salve to Rhaegal’s pride to allow him to obey her, leaping back to the sky.

“That was harrowing,” Jon jests, making Dany laugh. It diffuses the tension and turmoil enough so that they’re left simply enjoying each other’s company for the rest of the afternoon.

The tranquility is disrupted eventually when Ghost grows restless and abruptly rams his head between her shoulder blades, shoving Dany off her perch on the edge. She crashes into the river with a yelp. Jon jumps in after her before she can even flail to the surface, grabs her around the waist, hauling her upward.

“What are you doing?!” she snaps, spluttering on water.

“I wasn’t sure you could swim.”

“Of course I can swim. I was just surprised.” Affronted, she squirms free of him and strokes across to grab at the carved sandstone, keeping herself afloat there as she regains her bearings. “It seems your wolf has run to hide. Smart creature. I should have him skinned and adorn my bed with his pretty pelt.”

He joins her, mirroring her position, their faces too close. He’s smirking at her, at the obvious hollowness of her threat, the lack of any biting heat to bolster her vivid viciousness. Murmuring with a touch of mischief, “I can’t imagine what got into him.”

“Can’t imagine,” she echoes.

She’s aware of Kovarro laughing at her from paces away, her guards having crossed to fetch her before she waved them off. Her Unsullied are obscured by their helmets of course, and too disciplined to show humor while on duty, but the Dothraki are another story. Tossing him a dirty look, she begins to think she’s let her bloodrider become too casual with her, if he has no problem adding to her humiliation like this. But with him laughing, then Jon laughing, she can’t quite fight off her own smile. Or the wonderful warmth that blooms in her chest, where the ghost’s ache had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing personal for or against Arya. It just worked best for this particular story.


	11. Chapter 11

**I HEAR THE BELLS  
[chimera chimes]**

**+**

_**“A love that won’t be exorcised…”** _

In her dream, she walks the woods of a wolf. The sky is filled with blackbirds. The trees are white bark and red leaf. She traces paw prints in the snow, following toward the howling. In her dream, at the end of the path, Jon is waiting for her below the waterfall. A solitary figure, dark fur and leather against the vast snow of the hills, staring into the black mirror of shimmery water. He’s lost in reverie until she reaches him, turning to smile at her, that constant conflicting expression of his, darkened by quiet misery with a ray of shining happiness that softens his harsh edges. He’s just the way she remembers him.

_“We could stay a thousand years. No one would find us.”_

_“It’s cold up here for a southern girl.”_

_“So keep your queen warm.”_

Looking at him hurts, but she can’t help matching that smile. Teases fondly, “Running from your troubles again?”

“Hiding away until they become less insurmountable,” he amends.

“Room for one more?”

His body angles to welcome hers, bringing them close enough to share warmth. He lays a hand on her stomach, moving tentatively at first, only wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her against him once she ignores the chance to deny him. An echo of unlived memory, a timeless moment. Holding her tight, voice graveled with emotion, he says, “That’s not for you.”

“It was my idea originally, wasn’t it?”

His free hand lifts to cup her jaw, thumb stroking across her smiling lips. “You’ve already done all your hiding, Dany.” There’s sadness in his bronze eyes as he pores over her features, committing her to memory for the last time or simply refamiliarizing himself. “Don’t go backwards. Your troubles are already conquered.”

“Hardly.” She laughs, shaking off his hand, but he curves it to slide under her silver mane and grasp the nape of her neck. The laughter dims as he draws her in, her tone thickening, dropping to a distracted whisper when her lips move against his own, “You’ve been away too long. All I’ve got are troubles.”

After a searing kiss that steals her breath, she plants a palm to his chest and pushes him back enough to suck in air, enough to clear her head. He takes the beat to gesture at their dreamscape and tell her, “Not here, you don’t.” But when her eyes skate across the waterfall, he taps her temple instead. “Not in here.”

“Jon…”

The next time he leans in, she tilts her chin. He stops, heaves an acquiescing sigh, and drops his brow to rest against her hair. Held in his arms, feeling his strength, feeling his heartbeat, all the longing she’d grown used to ignoring sparks back to distracting levels. She missed this. That’s the knowledge she hadn’t allowed herself to ever let in. Beyond the betrayals and failures, the shames and griefs, the disappointments and the better sense, there is forgiveness and acceptance waiting to rush in. There’s the simplicity of missing him.

“I hate you,” she murmurs softly, “and I love you.”

“I know the feeling.”

“It’s not a seething hatred. It’s not hard or hot with fire. It’s a soft hate. Something that lacks passion. It’s a tiring thing.”

“Wonder why I hide,” he jokes, a halfhearted attempt to ease the severity of that impact. It falls flat as he sobers almost instantly, darkening again. “None of this is the way I wanted it.”

Dany disentangles herself from him. Faces the roaring waterfall. “What did you want?”

“What you wanted.”

“You didn’t know what I wanted. That was clear.”

“I did, Dany. Of course I did.”

“Who is it I’m talking to?” she demands, struck suddenly by the confusion, by the need for clarity. She spins around to him but takes a reflexive step back when she finds him closer than she expected. “Is this my long lost nephew standing before me? Or the Stark bastard who came to Dragonstone to face a terrible Targaryen?”

A little bewildered, Jon shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re asking of me. I’m just me. Here in this place.”

“You don’t exist. We don’t exist anymore. This us. This place.” She looks out over the endless hills of snow, the jagged rocks, the rushing water. “It isn’t real, Jon. It can never be real. We made different choices this time.”

“I don’t understand.”

Frustration flares. A moment ago, it seemed like he was all knowing. Now, it’s like ramming her head against brick. As if a veil had been lifted and has fallen once more over their eyes, concealing the world that lies beyond their own. An unlimited perspective, now narrowed. She’d felt on the precipice of something, perhaps the chance to clean out old festering wounds between them, or rekindle a lost connection. But she made a mistake somehow. She misstepped and that precipice has vanished.

“How long have you been in this place?” she wonders.

“Always.”

“Always?”

Jon shrugs. “For as long as I can remember really.”

“Why here? Why stay?”

“Why do you think?” His penetrating stare pins her still, locks up her limbs, races her heart. He’s so built of smothered intensity, never easy, never simple, never shallow. There’s always a hundred things he isn’t saying, a hundred things he means with one word, one look, one promise. “Waiting for you, Dany.”

Wryly, “You said you were hiding.”

“Hiding, waiting, same difference.”

“Is it though?” she volleys. Revolves around to absorb the scenery once more before she hesitantly returns to his embrace. She’s come willingly but is stilted within it, fingers gripping at his forearms around her. “Are you ever going to face your demons? Or just hide here from them forever?”

The shadow of another happy smile is at the edges of his mouth. He tugs at the circle of his arms, jostling her, lightening her. “Would you like me to? You’d prefer I come with you? I thought you might rather I remain banished here, out of sight, out of mind.”

“You’re never out of mind,” she admits, “no matter how far I go.”

“Is that so?”

Dany rolls her eyes, indulgent, however unnerved. “That’s so.” The whole thing is surreal, his behavior uncharacteristic of the man she used to know. Even more so of the man she knows now. “But you should make that choice for yourself, not because of me. I won’t promise you anything, Jon. You need to choose your own battles.”

“You were always the visionary,” Jon tells her, not quite dismissive, but certainly deflecting. “I was only ever a soldier.”

“A general. A king. Don’t diminish that.” She’s gone hard, stone cold, shoving free of him again. “You weren’t always a coward, Jon Snow. You could be more than that, like you once were, if you chose.”

“Ouch.”

“What is wrong with you?” she snaps, becoming increasingly irritated by his hollow jesting, so unlike him. The man she knew had been many things, but never irreverent. Normally, she wouldn’t mind the difference, might even enjoy it, but here and now it grates her.

It’s as if he’s not whole, as if he can’t be whole in this place, only a fragment, a few traits without the proper chemistry to mix them up altogether.

When he approaches, she slams her hands to his chest, barring him. When she turns away, he catches her elbow, swinging her right back around. The momentum has them colliding, crushed together as he locks his arms around her shoulders. He kisses her hard, crushing to match the collision. The impulse to bite him for it occurs, but she forgets, sinking in deep. The frustration, the disorientation, the resistance to this dreamscape fades to the background.

For just one moment, she chooses to cling to this, wants to savor the feeling, allowing herself to get lost in the past. She’d always been too afraid of being cut adrift in it, losing her way, so she turned her head from the temptation, didn’t dare get near. In this kiss, she realizes it was wasteful to be afraid. She can give herself this goodness, without invalidating the bad. She can welcome in the rush of warm memories, without being drowned.

By the time they break apart, she’s forgotten what she was arguing for or against. He may just be a shadow of Jon Snow, the past or the present of him, but sometimes a shadow is enough.

“I’ve missed you, Dany,” he rasps against her lips, hand tightened on her nape, their brows pressing together, tired and reunited. “You’re right. I’m a coward.”

“So don’t be. Remember who you really are. Who you’re meant to be.”

“I’ve missed you,” he says again, holding her ever tighter until she can barely take a breath under the force of his quiet desperation. “I was paralyzed when it mattered and you paid the price. We were meant to do this together. We were meant to do _everything_ together.”

“Were we?” she asks, genuinely doubtful, genuinely indecisive. “I wish we had.” Then she pulls away, escaping his grasping hands, forcing distance, just enough to breathe, to clear her head, ordering her scattered thoughts, overemotional and disjointed. “I am sorry, you know. I get so caught up in blaming you for your false promises that I never get around to…”

“Dany?”

She shakes her head, swallowing hard, struggling to find the words. He tries to grab her again, and again her palm hits his chest, holding him back, fingers bunching at the leather edge, feeling his heart hammer under her touch. It feels so real. It’s all so real. “I’m sorry for falling apart. I’m sorry that I wasn’t enough. I’m sorry that I wasn’t what I was meant to be either.” Her eyes have been wet for awhile now, but finally releasing these words she’s held inside for so long makes them spill over. Her voice breaks, “I’m so sorry for ruining everything.”

“You didn’t do it alone,” Jon defends.

Because he is kind. Whatever his faults, he has always been that. Kinder to her than she deserved, once she became the monster. However he failed her before the day she razed King’s Landing, the day everything irrevocably changed, he did right by her after that day, she knows he did. He came for her. He saved her. Spared the world from her, but did it kindly. He did the kind thing by trying to give her peace, trying to let her rest. He was kind when he came to kill her. He was kind when he couldn’t bear the act. He was kind when he said he loved her. He was kind when he let her blame him, because it lessened her ashamed anguish. He was kind when he accepted so many burdens beyond those he rightly carried, because she was buckling. He was cruel in his absence when it counted, but kind when it was too late, kind when she hadn’t deserved kindness.

He did the right thing…

The only choice she’d left for him, she knows this, she knows it, but that hadn’t stopped her from hating him for it. It still doesn’t stop her. It’s not even her head versus her heart, because she holds both gratitude to him and blame in her heart at once. Her heart is all these things, traumatized and bitter and hateful and loving and grateful and empathetic for him. That dichotomy, that dissonance inside of her was once crippling, but now is simply confusing and accepted.

He did the right thing…

It took her a long time for that knowledge to surface, drowned out by the immensity of her trauma, of the memory emotions from a ghost.

For all his faults, Jon Snow willingly became her sin-eater.

_You didn’t do it alone._

_You didn’t do it alone._

_Didn’t I?_

“Which is ironic, because all I felt was alone.” Her smile is pained, trying and failing to chase away the gut wrench from his words.

He clasps the hand over his heart, uses it to slowly reel her in. He hugs her hard, pressing his mouth to the shell of her ear, murmuring fervently, “I could search a thousand souls and never find the home I found in you.”

“Jon,” she cries, just a ragged gasp, clutching at him right back. It’s exactly what she’d once begged to hear and her heart is breaking because it feels far too late.

“Everything got so fucked up,” he rasps. His voice cracks, falters on that. His fingers dive into her hair and twist it into his fist. “That’s all it was. We lost ourselves. But it’s better this way. Dany, you’ve got so much back now, so much of what you lost. Your children. Your family. Your innocence. It’s better this way.”

“What about you? Is it better for you?”

At his silence, she pulls back to search his face. What she finds there leaves her at a loss for words, a loss for answers, but the need increases. She arches up into him, crashing her closed mouth against his, pushing until he opens up to her. Until he opens for her and everything spills out. It’s not like any kiss she can remember. It’s not like they’ve ever embraced before. This is full of cutting edges and drowning seas, urgent fear and desperate need and all consuming desire and overpowering pain and a vast solace.

They’re digging at each other’s wounds, even while they pull to keep together against a tidal force trying to sweep them apart, tearing wildly at the windows and doors that divide them, scraping up the comfort they each hoard for the other.

She kisses him. And kisses him. Until he’s suddenly gripping her by the upper arms and thrusting her backward, bruising her in that clenched grip, crushing her with his fear, an unsafe space between their bodies. When she opens her eyes, his lips have gone blue.

She’d say it’s more unsettling than actually alarming, but he sounds very alarmed, agitated, growling, “You can’t be here anymore.”

“What?”

“Go now, Dany,” he harshly urges, panicked, and shoves her. Then she’s falling into the icy water, a shock that jolts her violently out of their dreamscape.

Dany wakes knowing what that means. Ravens or warlocks or shadowbinders. Damn them for interfering, for trying to corrupt. Ravens or warlocks. Somebody is always messing with her head.

**+**

_**“Smoke you out…”** _

Dreaming of dragons.

Dreaming of mazes.

Dreaming of wolves.

Dreaming of fields and fields of children. Her children. The dream of spring, of leaving behind her destructive nature, of embracing nurturing. Slowly, they eclipse the killing fields in her mind, the lifeless ice, the dying desert, the unending search for home.

Time passes and Daenerys treads water, feeling impossibly paralyzed, feeling as if she’s still chained to Qarth’s altar. Her son is out there, her child is a slave, is suffering, is _bound_. She needs to be out there chasing after him. She needs to be following his angry impotent roar, that deafening pressure in her blood, in her brain. She can’t stand being stuck here. It takes every bit of self-control she’s capable of to resist the siren call, the seething frenetic impulse to climb onto a dragon’s back and burn. As ferociously as she needs to free her son, she also needs to be out there with her men, up in the sky, confronting her enemies. Instead, she is tied down here, left behind by her legions, hiding from the fight.

Qarth, the Queen of Cities, gateway between east and west, becoming seat to the Dragon Queen. It makes a sort of sense. It’ll never be home. Not even the semblance of it that Meereen became. It required great restraint to not cast its people out to the Red Waste and raze the brick and mortar of the city itself to the dust when she was first freed. But is she freed? Truly freed? When she chooses to remain inside her gilded cage of her own willpower now? She struggles with feeling surrendered, weighed under her own pragmatism. It’s just where she must be for now.

There are endless tasks to preoccupy her. Caring for herself, tending to her recovery, and always Stormborn business.

The backlash from a trade embargo. The tension between two allies who seek to stick her in the middle of their bitter rivalry. City reforms falling apart. A crop crisis from drought back in Meereen. Townships to her north decimated by sandstorms, overcrowding from displacement. A dispute of merchant ships that turned violent in the harbor. Smugglers being strung up. Pirates ambushing trade routes and stealing away with vital supplies. Negotiations with sovereign powers turning sour. Uprisings in Lorath and Lys. Rogues raiding in Lhazar.

A thousand problems, small and large, all to take up her attention, troubles beyond the war for her to stress about. A thousand chances to tackle such things and abate this awful feeling of helplessness.

“When are you returning to Dorne?” she’d asked Oberyn, dining one night in her chambers with him and Ellaria and their Sand Snakes, a few others as well.

“Dorne is doing fine. Why should we be there when here is so exciting at the moment?” he’d quipped. “Besides, we’ve still a dragon to reclaim and mysteries to unravel, haven’t we?”

“We couldn’t possibly miss such a conclusion,” Ellaria had added. “Such a long way to come for a letdown.”

“Then you’ve time to assist me in a few curiosities,” Dany had declared. And so the Sand Snakes jumped for their assignments.

Spies, indeed. Not as useful as a Faceless Man would’ve been, but still very effective.

Then comes news from Westeros.

Tyrion Lannister, once posted as Stormborn ambassador in Sunspear, has retaken his family stronghold as Lord of the Westerlands, vying for a spot at the table of the Triumvirate, replacing the previous. To sway her from ideas of having him executed for abandoning his pledge to her, he sends a retinue of smarmy House Lannister politicians to convince her of his continued loyalty, despite his selfish ambitions carrying him away before her permission to do so was given. They claim he was presented with an opportunity and hadn’t time to waste conferring with her from such a vast distance. She knows better than to believe this wasn’t something he painstakingly orchestrated with all his clever little plans and speeches, arranging people to the right places. A plot he’s most likely been cultivating for years.

It worries her. Irks her. For a time, she truly contemplates eliminating him. But those thoughts come from a ghost’s anger, not her own. They come from the actions never taken, actions of a man that never lived. Just as she gives herself the benefit of the doubt, just as she gives Jon Snow, she must be as gracious to her old friend.

Dany is too swamped in Essos to concern herself seriously with Westerosi scheming anyway. Let him play lord of his castle and do his precious politicking amongst the Triumvirate. Her allies in the west with bonds forged of more durable steel will keep an eye on any machinations that might get out of hand. She trusts them and their gratitude to keep her apprised when necessary. Honestly, even if he was of the mind to, he’s too far away to cause her any real trouble.

So she sets yet another flare of paranoia aside.

Grooming successors is her most pressing occupation these days. With Drogon gone and Dany feeling vulnerable, no matter how behemoth her empire of loyal warriors grows, it is an incessant thought. Not just naming a line of heirs she can trust as incorruptible, but creating councils and assemblies and guilds for all different factors of her legacy. Successors, not to take up the Stormborn crown and be called queen or king, but a powerful collective of House Targaryen to carry on her mission of abolition. A mission shared now by so many, widespread so strongly, that she’s been relegated to merely the flagship of a movement whose momentum refuses to be slowed. One day, perhaps she will be nothing more than a figurehead in it all, this changing world.

Despite her ego and vanity being prickled with insecurity at the notion, she’s more so made hopeful by its possibilities. Perhaps there is a future to be reached where they no longer have need of her, where she can lay down her weapons and leave the warpath. This future vision both scares her and entices.

After her awakening, ensuring the Unsullied will remain dedicated to liberation, even after she has fallen, was one of the first tasks she turned herself to, her perspective so irrevocably altered by the mistakes and misguidedness of her past self. But the Unsullied legion is no longer alone in that. A nation of freedmen, half a million strong, stand with them now. And farther out, the winds of a new world blow. The changed tides take hold. Even without Dany and her dragons, they have a good chance of carrying forward past her fate, however it may end.

Representatives from Great Moraq arrive eventually, that vast island seated south of them on the other end of the narrow Jade Gates strait and all too near the current conflict zone. Dany sought an alliance and they gently rejected her, afraid of provoking the Dragon Mother’s wrath upon themselves but also unwilling to climb into bed with her. Moraq wishes to remain neutral in this war of empires, the Golden and the Ruby and the Dragon.

She makes no attempt to force their hand, but she does station sea patrols along its borders and delegates in its capital to keep watch and discourage them from going behind her back and dealing with her enemies. The island lies far too close for comfort, positioned perfectly for the emperor to exploit, if he could gain a foothold with Moraq.

While intrepid spies and expedition teams and ambitious mercenaries search for Drogon, Jon Snow and the Stormborn generals wage a more straightforward war. He rode out for the South Bone Peninsula encampment five months ago, and reports of their eastern push trickle back sporadically, with infuriating slowness.

The treacherous Bone Mountains stand between Qarth and the Yi Ti border, its range stretching from the coast of the peninsula high into the north, cutting between the Great Seas of Grass and Sand, Dothraki’s and Jogos Nhai’s. Below those vast plains lurks the lush mysteries of the emperor’s jungles.

It would be the soundest strategy to sail her armada and fly her dragons straight to his capital of Yin, toppling the emperor directly, rather than waste time and resources and men to wage a ground assault and get caught in its quagmire. Her men don’t know the terrain and the Yi Tish have definite advantages in any strife by land. Taken by sea, she could crush his empire in a week. If only the sea would cooperate.

She’d lost too many ships in the process of that first push, the initial fleet she sent forward immediately after conquering Qarth. She’d foolishly assumed the warlocks of Qarth had commanded the storm which felled her and Drogon and crippled that initial fleet that never made it passed the Jade Gates before her chaining. Her fierce and impulsive warmongering, wanting to decimate her far flung enemy without delay, earned her a hurricane that ripped her ships apart and sunk too many good naval fighters to the bottom of the unforgiving ocean.

Since then, she’s learned what the dragonhorn should’ve taught her, that eastern sorcery is never to be underestimated. Every time her ships leave the haven of the conquered strait and venture into the Jade Sea, storms summon up destruction, rivaling her fire. So her navy remains confined to the Jade Gates or westward efforts, and her legions claim the land. Harder, bloodier, slower, but they claim it.

Early on, the Yi Tish God-Emperor Lo Gai ordered his imperial army marching from Yin to overwhelm her. She constructed barricades to keep him at bay in a hurry, buying time to consolidate and settle on strategies forward. Three main fronts have become the focus, two points along the Sand Road in defensive tact and a third offensive along the coastline.

Bayasabhad is one of the emperor’s Great Cities, in the northwest region of Yi Ti, which sits at the east end of a Sand Road mountain pass, the major outlet of the deadly range that provides her greatest cover from the emperor’s ambitions. At the mouth of the pass which leads to Bayasabhad, she had initially stationed the surrendered Qartheen forces. Alongside a Dothraki khas to prevent them from defecting, of course, it’s where they blockaded any northern approaches from invading her territory. As the two opposing forces met, she sent reinforcements to hold the line, the Yi Tish regiment proving more overpowering than anticipated. The soldiers dug in and a no man’s land carved itself out there where the Red Waste kisses the Dry Bones.

In the shadow of the strangely shaped mountains, her legions hunker, dying of thirst and buried under sandstorms that fill their lungs and slice at exposed skin. Shields hastily constructed to block enemy fire, even hastier shelters to guard against the sand at their backs. They have water trains running continuously back and forth, bringing in freshwater to keep them from wasting away while they defend the border against invasion. But the land itself is almost deadlier than the enemy, and though the Yi Tish prove unequipped to handle the Waste, their warfare is more advanced.

Thousands of mounted archers, using arrowheads of gold and jade and bronze with strange tips that hook inside a man and ravage him if he removes it, tips dipped in venom that drives men mad. Chariot drivers tossing bundled explosives, fast moving carts loaded with archers and axe warriors. Cavalries of swordsmen, phalanxes of spearmen to rival the Unsullied. Whirlwind trebuchets throwing hollow spheres that crack and spill horror over the soldiers, sometimes incendiaries, sometimes stinging manticores, sometimes toxic powders that cause sickness. Bleeding from the eyes and nose, blinding, vomiting, fever deliriums.

The reports filtering in from the frontline sound more like tall tales than war reports, but she’s the woman that rides dragons, and she can imagine almost anything. After all, word of her own exploits reaching outsiders was dismissed as children’s rumors too.

She won’t win this without her dragons.

Sieging their fortresses is even more impossible. When infantry set ladders to the city gates or palace walls and climb to overwhelm them, the Yi Tish drop cylinders of spikes, rigged to chains and pulley systems, rolling down the walls too fast, down the ladders, sweeping her soldiers off, one hit leaving a hundred deep stabs into a man. One descent can kill dozens at once, then the chains retract the cylinders up again, ready for another drop. Tiger’s Teeth, they call these new defensive weapons. Add in the wandering cauldrons which pour molten gold over the men below in a grotesque show of wealth, and Dany’s legions become beleaguered, brought down from their hard earned overconfidence.

It’s a suggestion from the King Beyond the Wall that has them erecting falcon carts to pull down parapets, rather than requiring the infantry to climb.

Crossing the South Bone Peninsula, Jon joined his wildlings to the bulk of her khalasar as they pushed forward at the coastal Yi Tish border, meeting advancing forces in guerrilla battle over the jagged terrain, two great hosts clashing, trampling over each other, trying to break the opposing ranks and gain ground.

She offered Jon Snow a chance to prove himself worthy. Prove himself trustworthy, prove he will fight for her, deliver for her, before she is asked to even consider coming west with him. He seized that chance by heading out easterly on a campaign to conquer Yin and depose the emperor who machinates for her dismantling. She was glad to be convinced, would be glad in theory to witness him true to his word. So many dreams, so many fervent whispers echoing back from the unchosen path…

_My queen, you’re my queen, my life is yours, my sword is yours, I love you. They’ll see what I see in you._

He’d asked her to fight for him and his North, and she’d given up everything to do so, only for his home to spit in her face, for him to fall silent and indecisive and absent when she needed his support. Conniving snakes all around her and, when she dared dealt with them, he watched her with cowardly distrust. When she needed him to speak up for her against his family and his people, he was quiet. When she needed him to defend her, he ducked his head. When she needed him to hold her, he was gone. Her world fell apart and her grief drowned her and he was gone.

Yes, in theory, she’d like Jon Snow to come through for her this time. To give back, to pull his weight, to show with actions instead of empty words this time that he will fight for her as she once fought so hard for his sake. _My child, my people, my sanity, I gave up for a man who offered nothing but false promises._ In theory, she’d like to. But now that he is out there in the field, fighting her war for her, holding her enemy at bay, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of her loyalists, it makes the restlessness ever more unbearable. To be stuck here, useless to the fight, while they’re out there. While _he’s_ out there.

Dany won’t risk Rhaegal and Viserion in the emperor’s territory until she’s confirmed where the dragonhorn came from and if there are more lurking in enemy hands, waiting to snatch another of her children from the sky. So her men have no air support in this endeavor for the foreseeable future. Even as she becomes more certain, the dread ever heavier, that they can’t win this war without them, she clings to her resolve, determined to have faith in the Stormborn legions.

In her dreams, she’s haunted.

Wandering the darkness in search of Drogon. Escaping the North and its decaying tundra. Lying under the covers on a ship in the Narrow Sea, rich redwood and candlelight, intertwined with her White Wolf. Sometimes, he is her refuge in the dark, a safe haven to escape the maze. Sometimes, his lips go blue and Dany must break free.

“The dream dimension is where one’s mind is most susceptible to breach,” her resident shadowbinder had warned, back when they first spoke of those enigmas. “Which was why the Three-Eyed Raven could only reach you there. Dreamwalkers like you and I, My Queen, we have stronger defenses from malicious intent within, but we are never invulnerable.”

“How do I keep them from encroaching?”

“There is nothing to be done, but to root your threats out here in this dimension before they may infect you.”

“And if extenuating circumstances prevent me from doing so yet?”

“Then you are relegated to the fight within.”

So Dany bides her time, bearing the strain of constant battle in her night hours, her mind exhausting itself resisting invasion and corruption while it is meant to be resting. It is an immense relief when Tyene Sand finally answers her summons, freshly returned from her secret far flung undertaking. She’s the first of her sisters to return from their scattered spying behind enemy lines, infiltrated, embedded.

“How were your travels?”

“Eventful,” Tyene singsongs, bizarrely cheerful as she flounces in and collapses prettily across a chair, legs bouncing over the arm of it. Rather than irritate her, it lightens the queen’s dour mood, something innately infectious about Oberyn’s girls, inherited from their father. “I’ve never been anywhere so sticky. Hadn’t guessed I’d be glad to be back in godforsaken desert.”

Dany notes the differences in the girl, how she’s grown out her cropped hair and combed it full of oils to create a slicked sheen, making it drape in straight sheets. A reddish teak tinting brushed on her skin leaves it darker and richer than its normal dusky hue. The heavy kohl around her eyes shaped to elongate the edges, a cat’s eye deception, combined with the strange substance powdered on her lashes. Metal hooks pierce through her nose and lip, connected by a delicate copper chain sewn with rubies and jade. A choker of the same twists tight around her throat, a cameo of carved tiger. She’s never seen her so ornately done up, this girl whose the most unadorned and naturalistic of all the Sand Snakes. She doesn’t look Dornish today. She looks Lengii.

Which is the point.

“You were right. Your weasely warlocks are still doing bidding for Leng’s sorceress.”

“The empress.”

“Her little sister actually. Turns out, almighty God-Empress Choi Lin doesn’t possess any real magic,” she drawls. “It’s her shafted sibling Choi Zi who plays at sorcery.” Tyene waggles her brow, showing her teeth with a grin. “The perils of puffed big sisters… I can relate!”

“Tell me,” she orders. So the Sand girl unfurls a web of suspicion and evidence, mostly unconfirmed, explaining everything she’s seen or heard, everything she’s learned. It’s not much, but it’s enough.

Leng’s God-Empress Choi Lin, known as the Red Dragon of the Ruby Empire. Her sister Choi Zi, Sorceress of Turrani.

“Story goes, Empress Lin was consumed by jealousy that you were overtaking Essos, beloved by the people and rumored divine. Every time a people looked to you and decided their own overlords were false idols, she grew more enraged. Everybody’s afraid of it happening to them. She worried the Lengii would decide she was blasphemous and you and your dragons were the true Old Ones, that they might start building pyres for you. So she made a plan.”

“Old Ones? I’ve heard that term before.”

“It’s what the islanders call their gods. They think they live in the underground cities beneath them and congress with the empresses.”

Kinvara had warned her to be wary of Old Ones.

“I’d bet my inheritance on the Kings of Qarth being entrusted with the sole dragonhorn.” She shrugs. “Bad move on a smart woman’s part, but believable in terms of the overall scope of their scheming. The Triumvirate had one shot at this, after all. The element of surprise was vital and the Qartheens were best positioned to reach you. They couldn’t guarantee just how far east you’d fly. Once you were captured, it seems the emperor and empress were too preoccupied tug of warring over which of them deserved to hold the horn, while the Thirteen were too stubborn to return their gift.”

“Have you an inheritance?” Dany quips.

The girl grins. “Not officially.”

More seriously, she interrogates, “What makes you think the empress would give up the only dragonhorn in existence? Wouldn’t have squirreled away one for herself before ever relinquishing such a weapon?”

“The Lengii on the ground say their sorceress couldn’t just conjure up a tool to fell the sky gods. It took the whole of the Lengii people behind her to accomplish this. There was—”

Dany stops her there, interest sharpening, “The Lengii call my children sky gods?”

“What else would dragons be?” Tyene retorts, eyebrow quirking.

As she’s setting this thought aside for later ruminating, she instructs, “Go on. How could the common people be necessary for a sorceress’s work?”

“They called it the Festival of Fire. Lengii gathered in Turrani around Choi Zi’s sacred temple and prayed for thirteen days. Then they reveled on the thirteenth night until dawn. In the sunrise, there was a ceremony…” It’s not until this moment that Tyene’s aloof mood descends into something somber, suppressing a struggle of turmoil that she’s resolved to keep from internalizing. At just that brief flash in her eyes, Dany is forced to wonder what all the girl witnessed while she was on that island. “Construction required the sacrificial blood of three hundred faithful tributes to manifest. Felling your dragon from the sky cost three hundred lives, most hardly more than children. That horn was the only one of its kind, Your Grace, I’m certain. The Lengii won’t offer up what it takes to weave a second.”

“Sorcery and religion,” the queen sighs, sinking slow and hard into the seat across from Tyene. “Is there anything more insidious?”

It could be a lie. A mistake. It’s such a hard reality to fathom. But Dany decides not to question her.

Before her fall over the Jade Gates, Lord Varys had betrayed her to the Essosi Triumvirate of Qarth and Leng and Yi Ti. Because he wanted her dead, so Jon Snow could wield her dragons and reforge the Seven Kingdoms perhaps, or some other motive the Spider kept to himself, ultimately so Varys could play puppet master after being set aside by Daenerys. Nymeria Sand exposed his treachery in Sunspear, executed him in Dany’s name. For that, and for so much else, she does not underestimate the Sand Snakes or doubt their word.

Yin and Leng, her true enemies. The divine emperor and empress who seek her destruction, because the devotion Essos has built up for her threatens the lie of their regimes. They have no true power but the titles they were born with, the empires they were born into, so of course they are frightened of her and what she has done and what she stands for. Of course they are worried their own people will begin doubting their divinity. If they were to lose that which makes them powerful, the faith and fear of their people, they would be left vulnerable. Weak. Her mere existence is a threat to them, because her mere existence tears holes into the illusions their dynasties have woven to maintain control.

Daenerys Stormborn is powerful in a very tangible way, a woman that walks through fire and wields dragons. There is no illusion to what she is. It’s the tangibles that earn her control over warrior legions and fealty of the masses.

In the distance, there are people who do worship her as divine, the way the Lengii regard their empress, fanatics and zealots like those of the Lord of Light, or simply desperate lowborn who need some higher presence to believe in. She’d rather think of that as embellishment than true illusion, mythos rather than lies, because Dany herself has never claimed to be anything but what she’s proven to be. And she doesn’t discourage this for several reasons. Most importantly is that their faith in her leads them to be brave and bold enough to build pyres and summon her, to rise up and fight for themselves, to overthrow their own abusers, bolstered by feeling as if a goddess has condoned this. It’s a good thing being put out into the world. There will always be some who twist it, corrupt it, misuse it. But overwhelmingly, it has wrought good.

People grow stronger when they realize they aren’t alone in their plight. Stronger with hope, stronger with change. People rise up victorious when they realize a legion of kinsmen are at their back.

“And the warlocks?”

“She employs them for clouding your connection to the dragon. Influencing you… We can’t be sure, of course, all of what they’re up to. Truth never touches a warlock’s blue lips.”

“They haven’t influenced me,” Dany is quick and sharp to correct.

“I couldn’t say. They make their claims, as men do.”

“Have you brought me any proof of this?”

The Sand Snake snaps her teeth, a playful menace. “None at all. Do you require proof? You’re a queen. They even call you empress. Surely you can do as you please?”

“Go see your mother,” she dismisses, eyes rolling, rising from her seat and turning to the window and its expansive view. “She’s been worrying over you.”

“It’s what mothers are for,” Tyene replies on her way out.

Dany spends a long while perched on the windowsill, studying the cityscape, weighing her options. She’d known the warlocks were against her. However they simpered to her face, that much was always obvious. But she was hoping to grant them enough rope to hang themselves, leave them space to slip up in some way she could use to her advantage, reversing their ambitions. She’d hoped they could be her tool. For that, she needs something substantial to confront them with, some trump card. She’d hoped leaving them to their treachery would allow her the opportunity to glean a breach, an opening that could be turned around on her enemy, a knowledge she desperately needs.

She could keep waiting, of course. But it is such a narrow chance, and her impatience burns beneath her skin, the cost of it outweighing any possible gains at this point. No… She’s done waiting.

No one in the world has laid eyes on Drogon, but she is sure now, absolutely sure, that he is hidden on that island, trapped under Empress Lin’s tricks. Leng’s imperial army and impressive fleet, on the other hand, still remains with Leng, which was the only reason Dany hadn’t turned her wrath towards the empress just yet, despite so many rumors that she was instrumental in Drogon’s taking. She’s been so besieged by Yi Ti’s audacious emperor, she hadn’t wanted to pull Leng directly into the war efforts unnecessarily, at least not until she’d garnered a better handle on the emperor’s forces. Her legions are too consumed by his land conflict to be adding a third party into active warfare. Yi Ti and Leng may be aligned in their quest against the Silver Dragon Mother, but whatever her sly scheming and sorcery, the empress hasn’t so far made a move to aid him in his military engagement. That had bought her Dany’s caution, Dany’s restraint, despite wanting to storm her island with everything she has, decimate them, search out her son, whatever the collateral.

There’s a part of her, even now after all this time of working to temper her baser instincts, which imagines razing Leng to the ground, scorching its earth, leaving nothing but ash until her black son emerges, rises from the flames back to the sky where he belongs. That part of her, that dragon, cares nothing for the life that might suffer, the innocents that stand in her way. To the dragon, there are threats, and then there is everything else, which is simply prey.

She’s ashamed of that monster inside her. Terrified of it. But she doesn’t hide from it. She accepts it. Leashes it in the light, rather than burying it into the dark where it may fester and grow undetected before a final explosion of utter freedom. If she keeps those thoughts and impulses in her forefront, they remind her of the importance of temperance.

Temperance is one thing, and it will remain, temperance and patience, but she’s finished with waiting. It’s time to be proactive.

It was the Salt King of Qarth who first made the claim, how the empress had taken Drogon and kept him close. It was him who informed her of the woman behind the dragoncollar. It’s him she visits first in the wake of her new resolution after Tyene’s return, the first step before she takes what action she’s decided. If he was honest about the empress once, he may again give her honesty on the matter.

He’s the only Thirteen who survived her people’s siege. Rather than enact the myriad macabre fantasies she spent eleven months consoling herself with, Dany decided that day to keep him alive. He is one of the few Thirteen who never personally offended her, and he could prove useful, so calculation overcame bloodthirst. She chained him, had her men ply him for information, intended to use him to reopen the communication lines to his easterly contacts, to peel back the Further East Triumvirate’s conspiracy against her. Instead, he’d initially proved stubborn. Months in the dungeon, however, have somewhat broken down his resistance.

Not that he’s exactly cooperative.

It’s the first time she’s come down here, first time she’s seen his face since throwing off her chains. She doesn’t quite make it into the cell at first attempt. When she sees him, a tidal wave washes over her, knocking her over, tumbling her through a violent sucking riptide until she can’t even tell which way is up. He brings it all back, those eleven months, every indignity, every helpless fury and despair she suffered. Her heart is thundering and her skin is too tight and she can’t catch her breath. She retreats to the long dark tunnel, slamming back against the wet rough wall, digging one hand into her stomach, clutching her throat with the other. Clawing at it as if the dragoncollar still chokes her. Panic makes her senseless for a moment. More than a moment. Hours really. It’s a horrible weakness she just revealed, to her enemy, her prisoner, surrendering the dominant position. He knows it too, by the smug tilt to his lips when she finally composes herself and reenters.

Dany is cool and unaffected, a smooth impassivity to her face and icy fire banked in her eyes, her normal demeanor. But the way he looks at her, he isn’t fooled. The way he looks at her, she’s still stripped down and powerless. It burns in her veins.

She wishes Grey Worm were beside her. He would read past her blank mask. He would see the impulses she retrains and act them out for her. Reassert her dominance for her, while she retains her detachment.

“A war raged against success,” Salt counters, deflecting incessantly from her questioning. “Genocide of the wealthy man, the intelligent man, the superior caste. Burning all the rich and stealing all they have acquired,” he accuses, dripping with snide patronization. “That’s what you’re known for, Queen _Mhysa_. That’s why your savages and eunuchs and unwashed masses adulate you. But we’re the ones who build. We’re the creators. Kill us, steal what’s ours, you can do that and the hateful ignorant will love you for it. But when it all collapses from under you, they will turn on you just as fast. And it will collapse, my dear. How sustainable do you think this new world order of yours is?”

When she was young, self-important assertions like this might leave her plagued by doubt. They might paralyze her, terrify her, threaten to buckle her determination with insecurity. When she was young and uncertain and impressionable. Now she is a fully grown woman who knows her mind and knows the world. Doubt never flares at his taunting words. She hits back, clear in her actions, without regret.

“Is it stealing when you take the gold mountains men have hoarded through the work of stolen bodies? When you take the mountains and return them to the sea of slaves who rightly earned them?” She says it quickly, carelessly, uninterested in wasting time defending herself to a prisoner. “Rest assured, King Salt,” she mocks, “the merchants who made their wealth through moral means have retained their properties and riches, even the excess. As you did. All they need do is bend.”

That sets him back on his haunches, blinking, surprised.

“Oh, yes. My research tells me that you built your business without slaving, paying fair wages. For that, and for your abstention from participating too heavily in my torment, your wife and brother were given the chance to bend the knee, and because they did, they remain in their home with their own wealth, right as we speak.” His cautious surprise turns to outright shock, forgetting his disdain of her, smugness falling away at the startled thought, making way for tentative relief. “As for the slavers, well, they also earned what they received. The ones that burned, and the ones that were brought down to equal level with the people they stepped on.” She circles him then, hands folded primly, enjoying having this Thirteen on his knees, shackled and neglected. Slyly suggests, “You could go home to your wife, if you would like.”

A new kind of shock ripples through him, snapping him from his daze, attention sharp on her once more. His slumped spine straightens, chin tipped up, eyes bright and eager, however he tries to maintain his facade of defiant suspicion. “I was part of the plot that felled you. You’ll never let me leave this dark hole alive.”

“All this time, all your arrogant talk, and you still know nothing about me.”

Her offer leaves her with a sour aftertaste, but she does what she must, despite personal preference. Everything he knows of the conspiracy, every contact he ever had with the Lengii who orchestrated it, and any potential ammunition she can use to bend the warlocks of Qarth. All the secret little intrigues and intimate details that she can apply pressure with. The wants she can present as incentives. If he produces results, he earns conditional freedom.

When Salt gives her what she needs, she summons the City Watch, sends them fetching. A dozen perish before she realizes what is happening. The warlocks were prepared. They bespelled their border, creating sanctuary for themselves within the enemy’s lair, the same magic that spun Dany into an unreachable web in the Hall of a Thousand Thrones. Men get lost in a maze of illusions if they venture down the lane. Whatever patience or leniency she might’ve shown them, in the service of turning their skill to her own employ, that snaps away when the Watch returns, their brothers and sisters lost to that insidiousness.

“No more traitors in my midst,” she announces, coldly infuriated. “I’m tired of permitting vermin existence in my house.”

Dany descends into the streets herself. Soldiers surround the perimeter of Warlock’s Way, their windowless houses waiting in a row for her wrath. She stands at the far end, just shy of their entrapment cobblestones, Unsullied at her back. Her two children circle in the sky, drawn by her fury, feeling her intention.

“Smoke them out,” she commands.

They run like rats when her children rain fire down upon their haven, burning away magic. Soldiers round them up and herd them into the local Red temple, shackled and chained together in a circle around the priest’s sacred brazier, an Unsullied for each of the surviving seven warlocks, spear tips to their throats. A coven of practitioners who must, if they want to avoid the flame, do what shadowbinders loyal to her have failed at time and again.

Three days, they whisper and chant and stir their materials. Three days, they strain and strive. Dany spends almost all her time in the temple, overseeing their work, exhausted, neglecting herself, dismissing the bloodriders and handmaids who pester her for it. This has to work. They have to succeed. They cannot fail. They cannot deceive. There are lower shadowbinders observing their work, a fraction of the power Kinvara holds but knowledgeable enough to warn her should the warlocks be trying to pull another trick and sabotage her somehow. Three days, they weave their magic and Dany prays to gods she doesn’t believe in.

She misses her child like she would miss her arm. No. She could live without her arm. She could heal and move on and stop missing her arm. She misses Drogon like she would miss her heart.

Rather than break the dragoncollar that binds her son, going against the Lengii sorceress’s magic drains the coven. They don’t just fail. Trying wrings blood from their orifices, dripping from the nose and ears, crying red tears, choking on it until all seven are vomiting gore onto the marble. Collapsing dead.

Dany spends a long while staring numbly at the mess, ignoring the worried hands that tried to usher her out as soon as it began backfiring. She stands in the blood and soaks everything in. The grotesque death, her latest failure. She never honestly expected it to work.

And yet…

And yet…

This should be mild disappointment flaring through her. But it’s not. She’s not disappointed. She’s goddamned devastated.

Lashing out, she surges through the circle of corpses, sweeping practitioner tools to the floor, knocking over the brazier to send coals and flames scattering and sparking. She spins around, searching blindly, spins to shake off this paralyzing helplessness, this lack of solution, lack of path, lack of choice. Spins and finds nothing. She screams her lungs out, fury and despair and fear and defiance. Allows herself this one moment of pointless paroxysm.

If she could reach that wretched witch, she’d wrap her hands around her throat and squeeze the life out of her. And it still wouldn’t sate her hatred.

When she collects herself and steps out of the temple, leaving the mess behind, Kovarro and Ornela are at her side, eager to care for her, urging her home. She feels hollow. Walking through a dream. And then… Then she feels galvanized. Enough hiding. Enough waiting. She can’t defeat her enemies from afar. She can’t reclaim her dragon from this desert palace. She needs to be at the frontline, pushing forward. She needs to do this for herself. She’s never needed champions to win her battles for her while she sat patiently on her throne. She’s always been her own champion.

It’s fear that’s held her back. Fear of striding into the lion’s den without Drogon. She’s never gone to battle without Drogon. He’s more than her weapon or her stead. He’s her other half.

Once the Salt King fulfills his burden, she’s faced with another reluctant concession. He proved all but useless with the warlocks, but he does make further attempts for her cause. He leads her to the Lengii liaison who originally bridged the Thirteen with their benefactors, who approached them, who supplied them with communication and coordination and dragonhorn. He baits and snaps the trap, going to great lengths while luring the wary liaison to a point where her undercover operatives can capture him. For that, he demands, “I delivered, did I not? At great risk to my personal safety. It’s your turn, My Queen.”

“Very well. You may have your freedom,” she grants, though not in the way he’d envisioned. “For that is what I offered you. Your former status, however, I did not. You may take your wealth with you, should your wife like to return it, but you will not be welcomed in any Dragon Cities.”

No more vermin in her house.

She leaves off his chains, more than he ever would’ve done for her, and then she banishes him. Because his wife chooses to remain in Qarth, in the home she’s raised her family in, he rides into the desert all but destitute. If one had asked, Dany would’ve admitted, or at least alluded to, the friendly conversation she’d had weeks prior with the Salt Queen. She might’ve encouraged the woman to hold fast in valuing all that she’s accomplished since his imprisonment, how she stepped up to challenges and kept his salt empire from crumbling in his absence. Yes, there may’ve been a conversation, but the wife hardly needed a push.

Her best interrogators tenderize the captive Lengii loyalist.

There is as yet no progress made by the time news arrives from the eastern front. “King Snow has taken Asabhad in our queen’s name,” the messenger announces. The first of the Great Cities at the western boundary of the Golden Empire. The first significant step to triumph, where the Golden Empire of Yi Ti bows to the Dragon Empire of Freedmen.

It’s an easy choice to join him. To leave Qarth behind, to leave the horrible comfort and security of the House of the Silver Dragon, formerly House of the Thirteen, to enter the field where she belongs.

The night before she is to set out on her journey eastward, Dany sits down at her vanity and combs through her hair. In slow diligent motions, she parts the thick mane into a hundred sections, beginning to mimic the familiar old routine she used to share with Irri, then Missandei, then Ornela. She tries, not for the first time since Qarth’s siege. She tries, but it feels just as wrong as before, despite her bolstering new resolve to stand tall and stride into battlefields. To reclaim her former persona. She gets twelve inner braids in before the queasiness in her stomach wins out. The disillusionment bears down exhaustingly. She backtracks, hands falling to her lap with a defeated sigh, letting the half woven locks unravel.

At least she can last an entire night in a bed these days.

Once she’s reunited with Drogon, things will be different. She’ll feel like herself again. Once she’s saved her son, she’ll finish healing. If she tells herself this enough, she might believe in it.

**+**

_**“Devils all around…”** _

There is a woman in the dark with her now. She has been alone for as long as she can remember. Alone and cold and thoughtless. Her world has been empty and silent. Frozen. Lifeless. Now there is something else. The woman in red.

She emerges from the door which cannot be opened. It will not move, and yet she passes through, coming to her in the dark, footsteps echoing louder than any sound has made in eons. Only with the footsteps, does a bit of life seep back into this place. Suddenly, as she approaches, there are other remnants of unfrozen life. The drip dripping of water drops sluicing down the craggy rock cavern and puddling. The soft lap of azure sea nearby, the grotto carving in the rock across the expanse, across where she has never been able to reach, never able to move. The sea is just a gentle sway of life, a false promise of potential freedom, possible limitless vastness. It is a cruelty, that tantalizing presence. Now she recalls why she had blocked it out centuries ago, forgotten it was there. But the woman walks and life creeps in.

Wide golden eyes glint in the dark. Sleek blood red hair drapes down past her waist, twists of jade laden chains twined into the locks. Green painted lips. Red wrap around her body, embroidered with black dragons. Another taunt that stings like seawater in a wound.

Dragons. There were dragons once. Now there is nothing.

She seems friendly and longing, this mystery woman, and it confuses the beast. But only at first. The first time, the third, the thirtieth. By the hundredth time the woman visits her here in the lonely dark, she feels a sprig of joy deep at the bottom of her frozen well within, a sprig that is cultivated and grown into a blossoming tree with strong roots. She speaks to her, pets her, livening the dark with her tales and her plans and her beseeching.

She wants to wake the beast, this woman. She wants her to wake, and the beast is torn, for all that she wishes to be relieved from her unending unchanging stasis, she also shrinks back at the very notion of life. Shrinks back, something a real dragon would never do. Shrinks back, afraid and tired and hopeless above all else. Everything is gone. Her mother, her brothers, her whole world, it is ash. She is all that’s left, isn’t she? Why would she wake to that? What purpose would it serve?

Empress, the woman names herself. These meaningless human words they take to pretend at power. She is so small, hardly any bigger than a hatchling’s egg, and certainly not as sturdy. She is so small, and the beast is so big, even without her fire, she could crush this woman to dust with the light fall of one paw. If she could move a paw. Yet she has no desire to crush the woman. She craves her company. When she is alone in the dark, she ceases to exist, and then the woman emerges and there is a shred of life and light again. This little empress who comforts and coaxes at the great chained beast.

“My mother always said to commune with the Old Ones was to invite madness upon you. She said to come here and hear their whispers would be our ruin.” The woman sinks slowly to the wet ground, leaning herself so longingly against the beast’s scaled side. “Despite how it all went wrong, I am glad I didn’t listen to my mother. I am glad I found you. But now I need your help. There is a storm on the horizon. A fight coming. We cannot weather it without you. You must choose to be freed.”

The fire turned to ice in her belly eons ago.

She doesn’t want to wake. She just wants it to end.

“Don’t you want to be with me?” the empress asks, and her dulcet voice wrapping around that unbelievable question jars Dany into awareness, wrenching her apart from the dragon’s sense of self.

This is her, she knows, she’s certain. The God-Empress Choi Lin of Leng. The jealous bitch that stole her child and dumped her into Qarth’s tender care. This is her, finally a face to the name at last, finally a bit of understanding. Only not understanding. Dany doesn’t understand anything about the hazy disjointed dream she just experienced. The empress is visiting Drogon wherever awful place she imprisoned him? Caressing him, sweet talking him, lamenting? Nothing makes sense. Why would the woman who cast Drogon into cursed slumber be mourning her inability to wake him now? Has something gone wrong in her intentions? It felt that way. Or by wake did she mean gain control? To wield him as a weapon against his mother? That had always been the ultimate goal of stealing a dragon, of course, and what Dany was terrified of most, flashbacks of Viserion under the Night King plaguing her so relentlessly. But Drogon is strong, too strong for some petty witch to control his mind.

Except…

No, she can’t even clear her head enough to focus on all that would bewilder her. She can’t focus on anything but the intensity choking in her throat, bursting in her chest, burning in her veins.

_She acts like she loves him._

That more than anything else infuriates Daenerys.

 _Get your cursed claws off my son_ , she thinks, snarling at the evil beautiful woman of her dragon dreams. Wanting to wrap her hands around her slim throat. Wanting to open her dragon jowls and breathe fire until she’s just black bones and putrid stench. _How dare you? He is my child, not yours. How dare you enslave him then seduce him!_

Dany’s inner rage, trapped within Drogon, is made all the more visceral and vicious by the lack of his own. Normally, she feels his fury, his impotence, his disdain. But under the empress’s soothing touch, stroking him the way Dany always did, his emotions are quelled. As if he’s sunk so deep into his unnatural sleep that he’s lost his fire, lost the grip on his trademark temper, that which had energized him even in his draining captivity. She should feel him wanting to snap that hand between his teeth, wanting to burn this woman, his captor. Instead, he all but purrs for her touch. Yearns for her, the way he used to Dany.

It’s terror and it’s resentment and it’s grief and it’s jealousy most of all, this feeling, this new fuel for the old rage. This empress hasn’t just stolen her son away. _She’s stealing his love_ , she thinks, a brokenly jagged cry strangled inside her somewhere. _She’s making him forget me. She’s replacing me. She’s becoming the Mother of Dragons. Masquerading._

Such a realization hurts Dany more than anything that came before. The insecurity, the devastation, that Drogon would prefer another, that he would forget his mother, that he would stop loving her. Does he hate her? Does he feel she abandoned him?

That’s what this horrible feeling is. Abandonment.

Drogon is abandoning her.

They could not have chosen a better way to break her.


	12. Chapter 12

**I HEAR THE BELLS**   
**[chimera chimes]**

**+**

_**“Every road you take will lead you home…”** _

“Slow,” he says. “Take it slow.”

“It’ll get away!” the boy argues.

“Robb…” Jon lays a quelling hand to his shoulder, uses his other to tap at the boy’s elbow, steadying his hold on the drawn bow. “You’ll chase it away regardless if you rush and miss. Don’t waste your shot. Slow, focus. Breathe in. As you breathe out, release the string.”

After a moment of securing his aim, he starts his exhale, goes to unfurl his cramping fingers—

An arrow slices between them, pinning the rabbit to the ground, mid hop. Robb startles, grip slipping, arrow glancing off a tree, chipping bark. They whirl around, finding the girl, looking down on them with a smug grin, sat astride her horse at the edge of the treeline. Her dress is muddy. Her silver tresses rustle in the wind, unbound carelessly from the braids her mother does every morning, gnarled like some feral child’s.

“You could’ve taken my eye out!” the boy angrily exclaims.

“Only if I’d meant to,” she counters, urging her horse toward them as she hooks her bow away to her saddlebag.

Jon knows he should admonish such behavior, since one shift of the horse beneath her and she could’ve struck either of them, but he feels his own grin pulling at his mouth. He can’t ever seem to help it. She reminds him so much of Arya when she was little. A wilder Arya, fierier Arya, if that were possible. So he turns his face from them, goes to collect her kill while the children bicker.

“I don’t know why you still bother with these excursions, Father. He’s never going to be any good at this.”

“I just need practice.”

“Practice! You’ll be a hunched old man and I’ll still be doing your hunting for you.”

“Enough, Laen,” he warns, but he’s still grinning. Pretends to not see the way she sticks her tongue out at her brother, or the way he pinches her calf before ducking to avoid a hard kick to the face.

“So you can use a bow,” Robb scoffs. “I’ll still beat you into the mud with any other weapon.”

“You’d never reach me with any other weapon,” she taunts. “You’d be a pincushion first.”

“Is there a reason you’ve ridden over the ridge?” Jon interjects, knowing they’ll go back and forth for hours if he doesn’t distract them. “We said we wouldn’t be back until nightfall.”

With a shrug, “Mother sent me out to fetch you. Ask her.”

“Let’s pack up then, get the horses.” But when he turns his back on them, moving ahead toward their campsite, he hears the girl yelp, horse whinnying in protest, spins back around to find Robb leapt up, arms around her waist, struggling to tug her down from the saddle. Jon sighs.

“Ow!”

“Get off!”

“Brat!”

She’s half unseated when she fists a hand in his black curls and yanks hard enough to make him shout. Just as her elbow arcs at his nose, their father gets his palm in the way, catching her. His free hand takes Robb by the nape, corralling him to Jon’s other side, separating the two. As they glare at each other, he picks her up and sets her back in her saddle before she can fall, dangling precariously as she’d been by one foot still stuck in the stirrups. Then he looks at the boy.

“You know better than this. You could’ve really hurt your sister.”

“Who’s hurting her?!” Robb exclaims, incredulous. “She almost kills us and I’m the one that’s in trouble?”

“Elaena is littler than you. It’s not fair to fight her.”

“Speak for yourself,” she balks, indignant. “I could kick his—”

“ _Enough_ ,” Jon growls, stern now, no longer amused. Well, still amused, but masking it better. “Didn’t your mother need us?”

“Yes,” she concedes.

“Then shouldn’t we be going?”

“We’re going,” the children mutter grudgingly, turning from each other and their constant provoking.

It’s a long ride over the ridge, across the grove, back to the house. It takes half the afternoon.

Jon dismounts as soon as he glimpses the familiar blue dress splayed across the grass, his wife beneath her favorite lemon tree, book in her hand. He leaves Robb to take the horses into the stable and tend them, watches Elaena bounding restlessly into the house, yelling about dressing their earlier kills in time for dinner. When he reaches her, he joins her on the ground, waits for her attention to turn from the book pages. It doesn’t, so he lifts her hand to his mouth, smirking against her knuckles as her lips compress, pointedly fixed on her reading, pointedly ignoring him. He can feel laughter trapped in her body, a faint vibration when he lays a palm to her stomach before she bats it away.

“Thought you were in need of me?” he questions playfully.

With a charming smile, eyes still downcast, “I always need you.”

“Be serious.”

“I wanted my boys close to home today. Is that so wrong?” But the casual irreverence sobers into something darker, the glimpse of a troubled expression flickering over her beautiful face before she conceals it from him. Says softly, “Storm is on the way.”

“How do you know?”

She doesn’t answer. She never answers those kinds of questions.

He snatches the book, tossing it across the grass when she lunges to reclaim it. Before she can go after it, he drops his top half onto her like Ghost might, pinning her down, head cradled in her lap. She pauses, blatantly debates for a moment about shoving him into the dirt, then gives up with an indulgent sigh, leaning back against the tree, her fingers raking soothingly through his unkempt curls.

It’s a peaceful moment, one that has his eyes drifting shut, a sense of such easy contentment sprung from simplicity. When he looks up at her, he gets caught in her crystalline stare, something so deep and stirring about those otherworldly eyes. Something enticing. Something inspiring. He wants to stay here, for eternity, stay and never move, never look away. Right here, this is where he belongs, where home hides.

“It’s the strangest sensation,” Jon murmurs dazedly.

“What is?”

“I’m not sure.” He’s frowning now, mind snagged on the thought, the nebulous confusion he can’t seem to define. “Do you ever wonder why we were brought here? Why you and I were…”

“Meant to be brought together?” she surmises.

“Aye. The why of it. That we love each other.”

“Maybe we were brought together because we’re the last of our kind, you and I, and the world’s last chance of continuing our legacy.”

“That’s enough for you?”

“Is that all there is?” she challenges.

Jon skims his roughened fingertips gently across her cheekbone, brushing silken silver hair behind her ear, trailing down with it behind her shoulder, making her shiver when he caresses her spine. “I don’t care about legacies,” he tells her, sounding even huskier than usual, emotion all bottled and jagged. “I never wanted you for the world’s sake.”

“Then does it matter, the why of things? Love isn’t always something that can be justified. Should I write a list of all your traits that make you worth loving? The actions you’ve taken, the words you’ve said, the future you crave that will explain the merits of my decision to love you? Or the reasons I shouldn’t? That’s not how hearts work.”

When she says this, all he wants to do is kiss her. Hook his arm behind her neck and roll her down into the grass with him. Hold her close. Never let go. Instead, dread unfurls. He’s gripped with an awful urgency, propelling him to his feet. That feeling he gets whenever he comes here, that inevitable ending. A force pulling him away. He turns toward the hills, sees the bright sky darkening, storm clouds roiling in the distance, rolling in. Coldness on the wind where there had been a warm summer breeze, becoming biting, ice crawling closer with the darkness on the horizon.

He knows this feeling. He’d forgotten it, while he was with the children, while he was wrapped up in his wife. Now that the storm is coalescing, memory comes rushing back in. He remembers this feeling. He knows what comes next. Panic and resistance throttles his throat, tight in his chest, this powerlessness. He doesn’t want to go yet. It’s too soon.

“Jon…” Her voice, like a siren, breaks his trance. For a moment, like the sun between black clouds, her hand clasps his, pulls his attention from the horizon. “Jon, stay.”

Recognizing what comes next, what always comes next, recognizing that soon her touch will disappear, he drops to his knees in the grass, to her level, lifts his free hand to trace the lines of her face, desperate to memorize her. The shape, the sight, the feel of her. Map her out and sear her into his nerve endings before she fades from existence. Again. Always. She will fade. And he never knows when he’ll find her.

“Jon?” she whispers, leaning in. “Stay. Here. With us.”

“That’s all I want,” he confesses, just before their mouths meet, just before the storm arrives, sweeping over them, sweeping away the house with its red door and the lemon tree and the green grass and the chiming laughter of their children and the woman in his arms.

He’s left on his knees in white snow and black stone. The summer haze gone, his whole life gone with it, and he’s left in the wasteland again. The ice, the vast emptiness, the frozen waterfall towering above. His perpetual prison. Alone again, here in this lifeless world where nothing grows. His family is gone, and with them will follow the memory of them. He’s left with snow and desolation.

_“It doesn’t have to end this way. It doesn’t have to be war. We could run. We could just go. You and I. We could get on a ship and sail away and become new people. They can’t wage war over us if they can’t find us. We could be free.”_

With a howl ringing in his ears, Jon jolts awake, thrust up in bed, gasping free of sleep’s clutches, heart hammering like he’s expecting attack. He almost reaches for the scabbard hung at the footboard, reflexes snapping, before he forces himself to be still. Be still, because the room is empty. There’s no threat. It’s all in his head, this defensive adrenaline rush, just a wild outburst crossing over to the real world. From his place at the hearth, Ghost raises his head, scratches claws on the floorboards. It’s not until their eyes meet that Jon can breathe again, can truly convince his instincts that nothing is out of place.

Only the lingering effects of a dream he’s had a hundred times.

A hazy thing, hard to remember, but several stark impressions are always so vivid inside him. There’s never anything strange about it until he wakes and realizes it’s not his life, not a world he knows, not a woman he’s ever seen before. Conjured up from his imagination. A woman who can’t exist, a family that will never become.

While the irrational yearning hasn’t quite faded away yet, back to the recesses, forgotten again, he turns to his side and swallows a pang of guilt. Why should he feel so discontent? Why should he be longing for something else, something imagined, when he has more than he could’ve ever expected right here? Back in his childhood home, back with what’s left of his siblings, and a woman he loves…

His eyes run carefully down the length of her bare back, to the edge of the blankets where they’ve slung low to her hip, her leg still twined with his despite his restlessness. Moving gently, purposefully, he trails a hand down her spine, sifting along soft pale skin and red-gold hair. Leans in, presses his closed mouth to her shoulder blade, reminding himself that she deserves better.

Better than him, better than the man in her bed thinking of some impossible dream woman instead of his real lover.

He refuses to allow a fantasy to make him find his life lacking.

Ghost scratches again, drawing his focus. When he looks beyond the white wolf, he finally notices the raven perched on the sill. The wind must’ve wrenched the shutters in the night, because there the bird sits, watching them with black eyes. Jon starts toward the window, but the bird caws, flutters its wings, flies away. He meets Ghost’s gaze again, solemn and striking, sharing a strange moment of understanding.

There’s nothing to be done about this unsettling urge.

**7 years later…**

**+**

_**“No rivers or lakes will put the fire out…”** _

Descending the stone steps. Pushing at the vault door. Screaming for Drogon, where he sleeps on the other side, immovable, unreachable. If she could breathe fire, if she were truly the Silver Dragon, she could melt this wretched metal and crush this stone and reclaim her son. Yet in the end, she is just a woman. So she pushes and she screams and she gets nowhere. Time distorts. Hours in her dreams, centuries stretching on, an eternity in the dark dank depths beneath the earth.

Whispers in the darkness chase Daenerys. Insidious hissings and graveled croaks and warning snarls. Interlaced with that, softer voices, pleading, promising, echoes of forgotten memory. Her own voice. Then another.

_“Do not trust the Targaryen wolf. Talon claws hook in his grey.”_

She turns a corner, endless corridors of claustrophobic stone, water sloshing at her feet, rising ever higher, its cold biting her ankles, then her knees, her hips, weighing down her gown, slowing her progress. The stone will close in and crush her. The water will rise and drown her. She is trapped. Wherever she turns, she is trapped. And the voices, the plaguing voices, louder and louder, warping over each other, fragmenting as they blend into booming thunder. A thousand voices shouting together.

Shattering.

Her ears, her thoughts, her world.

A fissure in the stone, in the black, in the ocean, her prison cracking open across the distance, if she could only cross it to freedom. If she could only… But she can’t. She’s heavy, every limb taking too much energy to lift, to stroke, anchored down. She’s so exhausted. There’s nothing left for her to do but rest. She’s sinking in the black water. She’s drifting into the tired frozen sleep.

In the sudden silence…

Drogon’s low purr reverberates through her body, vibrating at her nerves as if she were mounted at his neck or lying lazily across his belly. It warms her from the cold of the water, warms her from within, his fire infusing her bloodstream, his soul soothing hers. Not just a dragon, not merely her child, but the other half of her.

Something that sounds like Arya Stark, _“The lone wolf dies. The pack survives.”_

Missandei’s fury, _“Dracarys.”_ Missandei’s hope, _“I want impossible things.”_ Missandei’s insecurity, _“I was worried you were trying to get rid of me.”_ Missandei’s stubbornness, _“We’ve chosen to stay with you.”_ Missandei’s sweetness, _“This hurt will pass. Dany… It will pass.”_ Missandei’s dignity, _“Won’t you let me braid your hair?”_ Missandei’s grace, _“Because of you, I now know what it is to be bored of happiness.”_

_“Now and always,”_ Grey Worm vows.

Jon’s words, _“That’s what family does. Protect each other.”_

Dany swallows down the urge to cry. Remembers gravely, _“I am a monster that protects people from all the other monsters. That is my destiny.”_

_“A beautiful monster then,”_ Oberyn’s voice echoes out of the chasm, its shine of hopeful white light luring her closer, seeking refuge from the suffocation of the black abyss.

She’s not alone.

She’s not alone.

She’s got such a sprawling family. She’s got a pack, strong and fierce and loyal and loving.

With the symphony of their voices echoing in her ears, it’s not so impossible a feat to kick free of the anchor holding her down, drowning her in the deep black. She kicks and strokes and propels herself through the water, following that sliver of light, brightness seeping from the stone fissure. As she reaches it, stone cracks open wide, crumbling away, giving the water a place to flow, carrying her along. She’s swept into a vaulted cavern, a cathedral of earth, drenched and choking for air, pushing up on her palms.

Just as relief begins to unfurl, triumph buoying her, something shifts in the shadows, some massive beast whose single step leaves the cathedral trembling, vibrations in the rock ringing up Dany’s spine. For a second, a split second, she’s at the edge of joy. _Drogon_ , she thinks, ready to push herself up and lunge at him. But when she cranes her neck, it isn’t her black son who towers menacingly above her. No, not a dragon, not a true dragon. Something else. Something hideous.

The creature opens its maw, a horrible noise piercing in her ears, some twisted amalgamation of beast’s roar and bird’s screech. She scrabbles backwards across wet stone, eyes wide, cowering under its loom. A fire-breathing female, an awful hybrid with a woman’s body and dragon wings spread wide, her lion’s head, her serpent’s tail, lashing madly at Daenerys, hissing, screaming.

She rolls aside, jumps out of the way of the whipping tail, just narrowly avoiding its lash, watching the stone crack at its impact. She gets up to run, but only makes it a few feet before that tail swipes her legs, ripping her from the ground, throwing her across the cave. Dany hits an outcropping hard enough to shatter bone, her body tumbling from rock to rock, landing with a splash too shallow to cushion her fall.

Pain explodes, blinding, dazing, leaving her paralyzed. She tries to get in a breath, but her body just spasms. Behind her, she hears the creature caw, feels it coming as the cavern shakes with each step, wind beating at rock with every furious flap of its wings. Panic and pain, that’s all she is, a wounded wild animal, helpless. She can’t fight, she can’t run. She can’t—

“ _Sun, rise_!” a strange voice shouts.

With a sudden spark, the dark cavern is bathed in light, warm golden sunlight, bright enough to blind. The creature screeches, Dany’s ears bleeding again at the sound. She manages to turn herself over, watching the creature jerk back, stung by the light, terrified, frenzied. Its wings pick it up off the ground with a wild surge, its body slamming against rock walls, against the cave ceiling, mindlessly battering itself in its urgency to escape the light.

Its screams are that of a dying animal, pitiful and pained.

Eventually, it crashes itself to the ground, slithering and squirming and scratching, clawing its way through the fissure Dany found, back into the black water, back to the dark.

“The Chimera of Turrani, with her Yin head and her Leng heart.”

Shaking off her shock, Dany looks toward the new voice. Soon as she finds it, the sunlight dims, cave shadowing once more. A figure comes toward her, a woman in a gold dress, her face obscured by some unearthly mask, her eyes glowing with magic. The mask, the face, it seems to be made of a starry sky.

“She’s a fusion of monsters, this chimera. She’s not so different from the Stormborn creation.”

“I am nothing like that thing!” Dany snarls, rage and disgust giving her broken body strength again. Dignity again. She rises.

_Chimera_ , she wonders. Chimera, chimera, chimera creatures, ungodly hybrids. Or chimera creations, something wished for, something striven for, something illusory and impossible. A false promise. An empty hope. Is that what this monster is meant to symbolize? Is that what she is?

“They call her the Red Dragon, you know,” the glittering starlight says, “their divine empress.”

“That’s…” Dany falters, speechless. That’s absurd. The dragon wings sprung from the creature’s back had been crimson red, but the rest of her… “That was no dragon. That was an abomination.”

“As you are, Daenerys Targaryen.”

“I am the Mother of Dragons. I am the last daughter of a royal dynasty. A legendary House. I am no abomination.” There’s nothing but imperious pride and fury in her tone, but the words sink claws into Dany’s soul, sickening her at the glimmer of doubt, at the buried truth. She’s had that thought so many times, called herself that, feared it so. “You’re saying that creature was the Empress of Leng?”

“Beautiful women aren’t always as they appear. Beautiful monstrous women. The Stormborn should know that better than any other.”

In the distance, she can still hear the faint echo of angry shrieks and injured whimpers coming from the dark waters beyond this cavern. There is rage in her, and there is fear, and there is pity, and then there is bitterness. She refuses to hold compassion for the one who stole her child and seeks to destroy her. “I am nothing like her,” she says again, softly this time, preoccupied. “She is my enemy.”

“ _Wrong_!” the starlight answers, a startling sharpness.

“Those that work to take what’s mine and bring me low,” she growls, turning on the stranger, advancing threateningly, “are always my enemy. And my enemies will be destroyed.”

“You have to know what to see.”

“I am no blind fool. I see enough.”

“We all are fools, Stormborn.”

“Where is my child? I know he is here somewhere. Locked away. Take me to him. Take me to Drogon.”

“I am not the one to find the Winged Shadow for you.”

“Who are you?” she demands at last, exasperated with this game of circling words.

“You may call me Quaithe of the Shadow, if you like, but you will never have reason to use my name.”

“You’re a shadowbinder,” she realizes, should have known right away. Then the anger intensifies. “I am beyond sick of witches playing around inside my mind.”

“This is the only place we may safely walk. Inside your mind is where you are the least blind. And the most powerful.”

“You’re right about that,” she says darkly, already gathering her wits back from where the dreamscape naturally scatters them, using her regained self-awareness to empower herself here. Casting out the intruders who roam her dreams like their own.

The last thing she hears as the starlight fades away is a warning echo of, _“Embrace the Red Dragon. Don’t trust the White Wolf.”_

Dany rebels at that notion. Embrace the woman that stole her child? That seeks to destroy her? No. There will be no compromise with the Lengii empress. She must burn.

Yet when she wakes, she can’t help but wonder…

**+**

_**“Monsters by many names?”** _

Arriving in Asabhad is supposed to be a casual affair. Her people have other plans. They’re too eager to celebrate with her, to show off their victories, all that they’ve done for her, like her dragons dropping charred carcasses at her feet and wanting praise and affection for it. Burying her worry and exhaustion, Dany dons the proud queen mask to oblige them all. The first city of the Golden Empire to fall to the Stormborn Reign, joining the conquered Dragon Cities.

Sorcery stirring storms, Yin practitioners, not Leng’s doing. They discover this from intelligence off Dragon Eyes and prove it with every further claiming, pushing the emperor’s forces back by land so the armada can follow by sea. They can’t reach Yin yet, but they’ve made it out of the Jade Gates at last, able to help the land invasion so long as they stay somewhat parallel with their ground forces.

Once the Stormborn armies made it past Asabhad’s city walls, the storm summoners retreated, and her front fleet was able to take the first city along the Jade shore, just past the Bone Mountains.

War efforts in the north hold the line, focused solely on guarding the border, Dothraki and Qartheen still maintaining their blockades to the mountain passes so far, preventing the Imperial Army from marching west into her territory. The emperor already shifted his bulk toward his northern approach before her men marched, leaving his lower cities and their defenses weakened. By the time he realized she was bearing full brunt down on him along the southern coastline, the majority of his army was already entrenched on the Sand Road. It’s forced him to rely on his disgraced General Qo to lead the fight, banded together from the brink of a civil war between the two and their loyalist factions in order to face the foreign invaders.

The coastline is where the offensives center, pushing eastward with brute strength rather than any tactical advantage or clever plan, because her generals want to avoid guerrilla warfare in the jungles. Such tricky home terrain would lend too much advantage to her enemy.

Her royal convoy passes a hundred little towns and villages en route to newly fallen Asabhad, a web of stone roads making traversing Yi Ti much easier than the Essosi regions Dany had originally risen in. Just as the Dothraki had terrorized western Essos for so long, the similar Jogos Nhai tribes spread ruin across rural Yi Ti with their raiding and raping and razing. Between the ranging nomads and neglect from the emperor and his caste of princes, especially of the economic variety, Yi Tish smallfolk were beleaguered and desperate and ready for an era of change. She rides through, and they emerge from their huts and hills, their rice paddies and jungle thickets, their crumbling stone temples, lining the cobblestone pavings to catch glimpses of her, kissing their fingers and raising them to the sky toward her children as the dragons fly over. There are always those that sneer or hiss hatefully, those that fearfully usher their younglings away or shout protests, but those are few between. Some toss trinkets and cheap coins of tribute onto the road ahead of her path.

A Further East tradition, she has come to accept with graciousness, even if it reminds her so uncomfortably of her Qartheen welcoming parade.

Stories and myths about the Silver Dragon Mother have pervaded the Golden Empire. That much of her original lure had been true. It wasn’t all lies, what led her over the Jade Gates, aimed at Yin, before Qarth felled her. They had built pyres after all. When she was felled, they gave up hope, disillusioned once more, but bolstered as she rose again. It was more than word and rumor from the rest of Essos. They took her legacy and built upon the mythos themselves, integrating it into their own, a way of assuaging their religious vanguard. They’ve come to believe she is a child of their two supreme deities, the originators. The Lion of Night, a wrathful god who punishes wicked men, and the Maiden-Made-of-Light, who defends goodness. And so they call for her to topple their corrupt leader, the false idol claiming dominion, the false descendant.

Some provinces propose the Silver Dragon Mother unseat their emperor to take his place. More provinces support her vanquishing of the Azure Dynasty for General Qo’s stalled campaign, to depose Emperor Lo Gai and raise Qo to begin a new dynasty. Dany is open to possibilities of that vein, since she has no interest in taking on another vast empire to rule. She’s already stretched thin and frazzled trying to care for her neglected Bay of Dragons and contend with summonings and strife from the Dragon Cities. She would need to learn the intricacies of a whole new culture, master yet another political rat nest, too much time, too much investment. She doesn’t want another empire to rule. She doesn’t want another realm to assimilate into. When she first flew east, it wasn’t with the intention of conquering. She was answering a plea for patronage. She’d meant for an alliance with a new Yi Ti ruler.

_Let the people decide._

If Lo Gai hadn’t made such a ferocious enemy out of her, she likely never would’ve committed to a wholehearted war campaign this way.

At the villages scathed or ruined from the warpath, caught in the crossfire of her legions and the emperor’s men, Dany halts her convoy to assess the damage each time, gathering the people left behind. She and her council make a show of organizing recovery resources, inviting those left with nothing to join into a caravan behind the convoy, refugees to be welcomed when she finally reaches her residence. The right thing to do, of course, but also the smart thing to garner goodwill and acceptance of her presence from those impacted by this war.

By the time she reaches the heart of Asabhad, past its torn walls and half burnt streets, the caravan is up to hundreds. Dothraki ride out to meet her, barking and war crying in triumph, pumping their arakhs. It frightens the refugees, so she orders her Unsullied guard contingent to discreetly row themselves around the caravan, providing a sense of protection, just to reassure them that they’ll be safe in this sacked city. As they parade through, she notes the repair efforts already underway, her soldiers putting the surrendered garrison to work.

Buildings are all tall things, designed in high narrow blocks rather than any width. Frames of rich red woods with white canvas strung between to create walls, floating stairs snaking squarely around their boxed heights, way into the sky. Their roofs are capped with flourishing skirts. On much of the canvas surfaces, there are colorful murals. Paintings of almost everything, landscapes, portraits, creatures. Tigers, basilisks, krakens, things like that. On newer canvas, there are lavish tri-head dragons and plumes of orange painted flame.

In the secluded heart, acres of a tranquil garden separate the palace from the crowded city clusters. Walking up the wide winding stoneway, she’s bombarded with new sights and smells. Her entire life spent in Essos, she’s never ventured this far east before. Never seen Yi Ti. Her first taste of its edges is not what she expected. The walkway is bordered by a half wall etched with faces. The path is dusted with even more color. Puffed billows, flowering pale pink of the cherry blossom trees that frame the walkway, blossoms drifting down like feathers on the air. A maze of a dwelling awaits at the end of the long path, immense towering carvings of lion-headed men and basilisks warding her off. Raised on stilts high into the treetops, surrounded by moats full of floating flower blossoms and pads, rivers crossing under the palace. A prince’s palace, now a dead prince, the ruler and his seat this Great City constructs itself around. Many buildings interconnected below an oddly shaped roof, made of huge halls left mostly barren and long walls open to the sweltering jungle. A palace full of small temples and towers and courtyards.

It’s a strange structure she will reside in while she is here, tackling the western frontiers of Yi Ti.

Adorned in intricate emerald robes to honor the Yi Tish, tailored to her by a native seamstress, embroidered with red thread pattern, Dany ascends to a central peak and addresses her legions. Praising them for what they’ve accomplished, rallying them forward. Then she summons the native smallfolk and accepts them into her khalasar, her pack, warning them not to cross her even while soothing their fear and inspiring their common cause.

One part of this that’s always come easy to Dany is her speech-making. Fervently ambitious words come easy to her. Motivation is the easy part. Deliverance comes harder.

There’s a woman waiting to greet her within Basilisk Palace. A Red priestess, Yi Tish but born in the north of Leng, named Chen. When she has time, they sit in the cherry blossom courtyard and talk.

Yi Ti has begun to idolize her in place of the failings of their god-emperor, helpful but unnecessary, while the real problem lies in Leng. The people of Leng worship their empresses unwaveringly, have for millennia, will continue to be faithful into the future, no matter what miracles Daenerys Targaryen brings forth. Leng is where she needs internal support most. Leng is where her son is cloistered away. Known in isolation, a shuttered island of demons and sorcery, shrouded in mystique. That keeps outsiders from venturing to their shores.

The empress traditionally takes two husbands, one a native Lengii, one of Yi Ti, one to command her armies, one to command her fleet. A tradition begun by Khiara the Great, their ancestor, a sacred figure. This current empress has caused tensions in her refusal to wed or bed. The Virgin Goddess, they call her, wearing a jade crown and red robes with a long thin blade holstered between her shoulder blades. When she first decreed this intention, years ago as she took the mantle at twelve, her mother assassinated by poison, they said she was desecrating Khiara’s divine will. It should’ve led to unrest. It should’ve led to power players positioning her sister to replace her and restore tradition. And yet, by fifteen, Empress Choi Lin had won the island’s fierce support. Their love, their loyalty, their undying belief.

Dany will never be welcomed by Leng. Dany will have an entire island of zealots standing between her and the woman who stole her child.

When she talks to Priestess Chen about her dreams, she very gravely tells the queen, “It is forbidden to descend the catacombs. Under penalty of death, none must descend.”

“And the Old Ones?” she asks Chen. “Tell me of your gods.”

“Our Old Ones are the creators who dwell beneath the island in endless catacombs and labyrinths. Their congress with the empresses lead to massacres and their whispers to any who venture below drive them mad. The catacomb mouths were sealed centuries ago, forsaking the Old Ones. It was to save our island. Those who enter the labyrinths go mad or never return to the surface. When the empresses would ascend after their congress, they would order outsiders to be slaughtered, invasions of Yi Ti shores, borders closed. Congress with the Old Ones never led to anything but doom. We sealed them away, we forbade every Lengii, even our empresses, from ever descending again. If you are dreaming of the catacombs, My Queen, someone must have unsealed a mouth.”

“A mouth to hell,” Dany murmurs sourly. “My child is down there.”

“Your dragon is in danger.”

“From the empress or your gods?”

“Not my gods,” Chen amends, hands folded in her lap, head bowed. She is a very serene woman, very somber, very still. “I left the island when I chose not to pay tribute to the Old Ones. I never believed they were true gods, My Queen. I believed what many have whispered, never brave enough to admit to. I believed these were demons beneath us, darklings designed to corrupt us. My travels were a search for something better to believe in. When I found the Lord of Light and his grace, I gave up my right to ever return home to my family. Some things are of a greater purpose.”

Gods or demons, Dany’s not sure what difference it makes. Whatever power lurks in the dark, it’s names change nothing. Stories tend to have at least a grain of truth, but she only holds stock in what she’s seen, what she can hold. Her son is in the dark, cast to sleep, and evil surrounds him. Every night, when not in his mind, she moves down the never-ending steps through the darkness, pushes and batters and screams at the vault door that stands between them, that refuses to be moved. The seal that keeps her from her son.

Gods or demons, she doesn’t much care. However terrified for him she is down to her bones, she will never falter in her faith for her black child. Drogon versus the Old Ones? She imagines… No. Gods or demons or anything else, they are no match for her dragon.

**+**

_**“Touched your hand but nothing more…”** _

After a few nights of rest, Dany rides out to the battlefield encampment to check in on her frontline. They’ve pushed the emperor’s army back as far as the Maiden’s Mountains, just beyond the ridge at Asabhad’s province border. Not that far to go before Yin now.

It’s what she’d planned before she reached the city, a tour for her legions, but she hadn’t been overly anxious for it until she’d realized Jon Snow wasn’t in the palace waiting for her. She’d asked after him casually, amid questions for the rest of her generals, and they’d told her most of the wildlings and their Wolf King were still on the frontline, ignoring regiment rotations. Then she got anxious, restless to get there, to scope the frontline for herself, to meet Jon Snow. She needed to look into his eyes. She needed to see if anything was different. She needed to know which Jon Snow he would be. The one from Qarth … or the one from her dreams. The one waiting for her at the waterfall.

In the shadow of the Maiden’s Mountains, vast farmlands and flooded rice paddies suffer collateral in the strife. Trampling infantry, chariot attacks, naval support held at a distance. They’ve dug into an impasse by now, the beginnings of a no man’s land.

The Yi Ti jungle is a hellish environment for outlanders to adapt to, especially amidst warfare. The wildlings have taken worst to it, they say, the Dothraki melting and the Unsullied suffocating under their armor, while the Freedmen adapt best, most of whom originated in moister climes such as these. The Summer Islands jungles are similar, she notices, remembering her time on their sister Naath. With the air so thick and the sweat so thick, it’s hard for a man to keep his thoughts in order, if he’s never experienced it. Between that and the strange terrain and deadly surprises cropping up everywhere they turn, the insects and the animals and the prick of poisonous plants, this conflict is certainly slanted.

And yet, even without aid from her dragons, the Stormborn legions are slowly but steadily ascending toward an inevitable triumph. She’s always been proud of them, but they continue to surprise her in the best ways.

“It shouldn’t be long now,” asserts the Ghiscari captain who rides beside her as she’s touring the encampments, briefing the queen.

Claims have come in that Emperor Lo Gai is fleeing northward, retreating from his Yin stronghold now that the enemy has gained such ground, encroached so close, yet ordered his forces to stay and die defending the Sacred City. His own life is too valuable to risk hunkering down in the palace, but his Imperial Army has been forbidden from retreat, even if it becomes tactical necessity. Reinforcements are on their way from the other side, it’s rumored, but her Dragon Eyes have yet to confirm any significant troop movements above Yin. This is promising news, given they’ve pushed the symbol of their enemy on the run, certainly, and yet disappointing as well. Leaving the emperor out in the wild only gives him more chances to plot and bargain.

Entering an expansive command tent, she interrupts her top tier commanders in the heat of argument, varyingly armored men and women of eclectic cultures surrounding a war table, cluttered and stained. They turn to show various forms of respect for the queen’s arrival, ranging from just a Dothraki grunt or a reserved nod to a full rigid bow or a reverent, _“Mhysa.”_ She sets them at ease, beckons a report as she takes her place at the head of the table, scanning consideringly over the maps. When she looks up, her eyes meet Jon’s.

Voices drown out for a second as ghosts fill her headspace, a flood of echoes that washes over her but fades instantly, leaving her gripped by curiosity, impatience, nervousness. He doesn’t look at her as if anything has changed from the last time she saw him. He doesn’t look at her like the Jon from her dreams does. The Jon waiting for her at the waterfall. She’d wondered if it was a ghost visiting her, protecting her from the abyss she wandered, or just wishful conjurings from her own subconscious. It didn’t feel like a conjuring. It felt like Jon Snow. It felt too real. Like her dragon dreams. It felt…

No, not a conjuring then. She knows it was real. And yet, this man standing before her now is decidedly someone else. That dissonance yet again, relief versus disappointment. A pang of longing that’s merely a twinge in the face of the weight taken off her shoulders, an easing from the pressure tightening breath from her chest. What would she have done if it had been him? If she’d met the man from her haunted dreams here in the waking world? If the oddly appealing Jon she’d known in Qarth was just gone, replaced by a ghost? Would she be glad?

Honestly, she has no answer. It’s a push and pull.

Dany smothers the flare of emotion, looking sternly to the war council around her, quelling their debate before it can devolve into bickering. Half the generals want her dragons to burn huge swaths of the jungle ahead to smoke their enemy out, rout them from their trenches and covers and defensible strongholds, send them scattered on the run. She refuses quickly, too disturbed by the reminder of her own ghost.

“I do not burn cities. And I will not scorch their land beyond repair. These fertile regions are a vital food source.”

Among only a few others, Jon’s the first to agree. “In thicket like this, you start a fire, you’ll never be able to contain it. Any benefit couldn’t outweigh the consequences. We’d be just as likely to ravage ourselves.”

“If we could lure them into the flooded plains here,” Commander Dradnar posits, pointing to a sketching on the maps, “dragons could set the bulk aflame, encircle them, without spreading past the paddy.”

“That’s still helluva risk.”

“How would we lure them?” Dany challenges. “They’ve dug in for a defense line.” It’s not an option she’s eager for, but she’ll consider all the best approaches.

After several hours of brainstorming and debate, she declares the day repose. Once the war council is dismissed, she’s left with Jon, stealing a moment alone. Wondering how to broach her curiosities. She can’t exactly just ask, _Have you been wandering in my dreams lately?_

“Walk with me?”

He dips his chin, gaze going past her as he clears his throat, reordering his mindset. Every time he focuses on her, it seems he must consciously shift his demeanor, bracing for something entirely different than he’d been braced for without her. It’s a hindrance she experiences herself, but she can’t help a faint flare of suspicion every time. Is it the same burden as hers, too much history, too much turmoil, for spending time together to ever be effortless? Or is it something else? Something sinister, or ulterior? Is it just part of that Jon Snow soul she remembers from a man always vaguely exhausted by any sort of human interaction? Or is it the gathering of a careful artifice for manipulation?

She knows which it is. She knows. But the paranoia is there regardless, just a whisper of it, always there. The doubt, the insecurity, the fear.

Each time, it grows dimmer, less noticeable. Each time, her sprouting elation gains strength, a cautious giddiness becoming something sustainably appreciable. Each time she sees him, she finds herself a little more comforted by his steady presence.

Jon falls in step at her side as she aims for her royal tent, moving slower than she should through the crowded rows, wanting to prolong things long enough to push past their initial awkwardness. He asks after her journey and she compliments a few of his ingenuities in the last battle that won them Asabhad. He expresses concern for how tired she appears and she pretends to be offended by the slight to her beauty. He stiffens and stammers until he sees the wicked tilt to her grin, then they laugh together, allowing her deflection to brush the issue aside. Back and forth, they go like this. She reaches out and hits a wall, he reaches out and hits a wall, but eventually they always find smoother ground to connect within.

It takes time to cultivate, this volatile garden, each of them guarding their own temperamental scars. But he swore, when he first arrived in Qarth and turned her world around, that it was important to him to try, and she becomes more attached to the notion every day, and so they cultivate.

There’s something more open and tentative about him today. Lighter than his usual grim dark cloud, incongruous with the killing fields around them, this war zone. When they stop at the seam of her tent, he starts to separate, to turn and leave her, before he hesitates. Angles his body towards her, too close to her, dark eyes searching her careful face for a drawn moment. Then he takes a breath and says suddenly, very oddly but earnestly, “I’ve missed your company.”

“Have you?” she murmurs in surprise, warily pleased. But to diffuse the moment’s potency, she teases, “Not too demanding for you then?”

“Have you made very many demands of me? I can’t recall. Definitely fewer than any other queen I’ve met.”

“The only other queen you’ve met was your sister.”

“Aye, well, she’s a more demanding sister than she is a queen.”

Dany laughs softly, fingers bunching in the canvas as she pulls the flap aside, clutching it behind her, eyes fixed on him as he steps back, knowing she should go in but frozen halfway. It isn’t until he’s turned his back that she remembers something. “Jon?” When he reverses course, she backs into the tent, urging him forward. “I have something for you.”

“In there?” he worries, catching the flap before it can close between them. He’s stuck at the threshold, just shy of the shadowed haven, as if the light and oppressive heat of the day outside would protect him from some unrealized danger.

It takes a few minutes of rummaging through the trunks her attendants left waiting for her to find what she’s looking for. By the time she does, she’s on her knees and dusty, but Jon’s braved entrance, letting the flap fall behind him, shutting out the daylight. It’s sticky and hard to breathe, even more so in the tent’s confines, its shade seeming to offer the opposite effect of a dark enclosure in the dry baking desert. She wants to unlace her travel dress and strip free of any extraneous layers, like her boots and leggings, but she bites back the impulse for now, knowing it would make Jon too uncomfortable. She lifts an expectant hand into the air, waits for him to oblige, clasping it in reflex, then uses him to pull herself off the jungle floor, twisting to face him. Rather than release his fingers, she pushes forward the offering in her other hand as well.

“Qarkash had an edition in its market piles,” she explains in a soft voice, almost shy.

Jon blinks at her, as if uncomprehending. Then it sinks in and he grows thoughtful. Cradling the battered binding in one hand, he rubs the pad of his thumb across her palm where they’re still clasped, back and forth along its deepest crease, staring down at the painted leather cover. The book he’d mentioned to her in Qarth, the one he never had a chance to finish before leaving Winterfell behind. She found him a copy. Brought it here for him.

It hadn’t been important. He hadn’t mourned the lost chance or anything so ridiculous. Yet still, she felt a little compelled, noting the subtle wistful twinge in his voice when he’d said it so offhandedly, inexplicably not as meaningless as he’d intended it to seem. She’d guessed it might’ve presented a symbol, something emblematic of his conflicted feelings for the past he left behind. The home he abandoned.

“What are you thinking?” she wonders.

For awhile, he says nothing, expression unchanging, and she thinks he won’t answer. But then, “I’m trying to remember the last time anybody went to such effort in thought of me. If ever anybody did.”

“It was hardly effort,” she denies. “I merely asked Ornela to—”

“Daenerys,” he interrupts.

She looks up and gets caught in his burning gaze, the intensity on display there now leaving her somewhat unsteady. Says breathlessly, “So you appreciate the gift then?”

“I do.”

“Good. That’s good.” She pulls away slowly, running her hands down her stomach to wipe the sweat and sting off. “I actually read it along the journey. It’s quite fascinating.”

There’s an awkward beat where the silence sits heavy and loaded around them, because he refuses to pick up her cue for deflection, for casual carry on. Then Jon says, still pinning her in place and stripping her raw with that intently simple gaze, “Last week, Tormund saved my life in battle for about the hundredth time. People do things like that for me, in the heat of the moment. People fight for me, fight beside me, under dire straits.” He hefts the book in gesture. “Nobody’s ever thought of me like this. Remembered something I said and took the time to…” He trails off, apparently unable to find the words to describe what’s in his head. He searches for a second, gives up, clears his throat and shutters his expression once more to something moderate. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

He’s moving when she ventures, “You may stay, if you like.”

Jon’s steps falter, pausing at the canvas seam, but he doesn’t look back, shoulders held stiffly. “I should let you rest.”

Another spike of disappointment, another blossom of sensible relief. She watches him go and tries not to let the regret and second guessing seep in. It was a good moment. It was a good exchange. She won’t be embarrassed. She won’t rake over everything she said like a silly obsessive girl. She’ll let the easy happiness of a few minutes ago infuse her limbs and lighten her troubled heart.

Despite so much wrong in her world, Dany finds that it’s surprisingly easy to feel soft and happy today.

**+**

_**“Whispers in the dark of your mind…”** _

_“There’s evil in that girl.”_

_“There’s evil in us all.”_

_“Where the difference lies is her capacity to commit it.”_

_“Her dragons, you mean.”_

_“I mean her power. Every form of it. You’d be doing the world a great service. You’d be doing her a mercy.”_

_“I won’t do this.”_

_“Then we’ll all burn. It’s your choice.”_


End file.
